Mobile Internet Service Providers are once again bearing the brunt of complaints against exorbitant mobile broadband roaming charges. A recent report in The Observer highlights the plight of a student who had used mobile broadband service for his stay in Paris as an intern and now has been served with a bill of £8000 by Orange, a broadband service provider.
The student, William Harrison had taken up a dongle broadband service contract from Orange to be use during his stay abroad. While the Orange store kept him updated with details about the dongle’s 3GB limit, Harrison claims he was not specifically told of the huge roaming rates that would apply if he used the dongle in France. Unaware of the high costs, he used the dongle everyday to make Skype calls to UK and hence ran up the huge bill. Orange has stepped in with an offer to waive half of the bill. Thanks to this customer friendly response from the provider, Harrison is now liable to pay only £4000.
The data roaming charges of the mobile broadband service providers have raised many issues with the users. Going with current rates, Vodafone charges £10 for 50MB while Orange and O2 charge £3 per MB within Europe. On the other hand Virgin Media has launched a new scheme of cheap travel passes where the user can pre pay for data transfer abroad.
In order to avert such incidents, a download limit is to be established across networks in the immediate future. Along with this, a system of sending warnings as the user comes near the limit will also be implemented. From July 2010, limits will be restricted at a maximum of 50 per month.
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