Ooops they did it again! Now data is being dropped from paid for extras and introduced as another extra per-use charge.

It's not a bad new data tariff from Vodafone, £1 for 15mb is much better than £4 for 1mb, natch, but this could add up to £30 if you only use it for a little every day - works better for intensive use every few days. Data under the extras program was much less but worked out cheaper for regular light users like me (esp with OnSpeed Mobile)

Had to smirk when their letter announcing the change tried to spin it as a benefit for people on extras - saying as only texts are now included in the contracts which used to include mms and data, it's now much easier to understand what you're paying for ;) (ie - nearly everything, as opposed to having had it paid without extra charges before).

I saw in the FT that the cheaper data was a response to T-mobile's better pricing. Might be worth sticking with Vodafone if I change the contract, but will wait to see what O2 do on this before signing up again - this latest change to extras only refreshes the bad taste in mouth about how much to trust Voda on being locked into another long contract.

Only another month to go and then I get me Vodafone PUK code. Have to decide whether to jump ship. O2 still merge SMS/MMS in some generous tariffs (which get a lot more generous if you ring them up and negotiate), plus Voda are lagging a bit on the smartphone handsets, so I may be back with O2 this time next month (unless Orange are more tempting or Vodafone get a lot cheaper!)

It's no help with MMS, but you can at least stretch out those Vodafone mobile data extras with OnSpeed Mobile - the clever (if more than slightly buggy) surfing service that compresses the pages you want to get them to you quicker and using much less mobile bandwidth.