Dear Vodafone, your data plan sucks

Recently I decided that I want to have the Internets with me at all times. I need to be constantly updated and entertained, so I thought I'd see what Vodafone could offer me by way of a data plan, as I needed a new phone too. I had a chat with the retentions department, who were useless -- but that's a story for another time.

I discovered you can have a data package for £7.50 a month. For that wholly unreasonable sum of money you get a pathetic 120MB allowance. The Vodafone person I spoke to told me that I'd have trouble using this much data, and that I could look at around 5,000 Web pages a month for that.

I laughed out loud at them, because as I'm sure you are aware, the Web has been more than just pages for some considerable time now -- there is video, audio and all manner of other rich content out there. But I won't be using any of it, because Vodafone is stuck in the 56k dial-up age.

So while the other people in the office are streaming things from their Slingboxes and ORB servers, I have to browse text-based sites and keep a careful eye on my downloads. A very careful eye in fact, because the 120MB isn't a soft cap -- once you go over it, you get charged £2 per megabyte.

By my reckoning, that would mean last week's Crave Podcast would cost me £50 to download. Not really worthwhile, even to hear Rory Reid's dulcet tones.

So come on Vodafone, why not join 3 and T-Mobile, and at least offer a half-decent limit?