A student at NottinghamUniversity learnt a lesson the hard way, about using broadband when abroad, after he was asked to foot a bill amounting to £8000, by provider Orange.
The student, William Harrison had taken up an Orange mobile broadband connection so that he could keep in touch with folks back home during his placement in France. He was told by the Orange store personnel, where he had paid for his connection, that his dongle was enabled with a data limit of 3GB. The Orange store had assured him, at that time that the limit would be adequate for his usage. However, they neglected to keep him informed that using the dongle abroad would run up a huge bill (see info for pay as you go dongle).
This lack of communication led to the disastrously expensive result for Harrison who used his dongle liberally to make Skype calls during his internship in Paris, according to facts reported by the Observer.
The high rates charged for data roaming have prompted many heated protests from customers for quite a while now. Current rates stand at £3 per MB in Europe for Orange and O2 users, whereas Vodafone charges £10 for every 50MB. Virgin Media has recently stated its plans of introducing inexpensive ‘travel passes’ in order to prepay for data roaming abroad.
Starting next month, networks will be asked to begin implementing limits on downloads. They will also be required to caution customers as they near their limit, and from the month of July, limits are expected to be restricted to 50 every month.
In Harrison’s case, Orange has agreed to waive half the bill. The student will still have to pay the balance, which amounts to a significant £4000, though.