Vodafone sticks to HSDPA pricing

Vodafone claims that it has a 'good grasp' of how much capacity users need

Vodafone will not immediately revise the pricing of its recently launched HSDPA mobile internet service, despite a similar service from T-Mobile being announced with more favourable rates. 

T-Mobile is offering 1GB worth of downloads for £17 per month, while Vodafone is giving users a 250MB download limit but is charging £25.

To get a 1GB download service would cost Vodafone customers £45 a month, £28 more than T-Mobile is charging.

"That price will stand for the time being," a Vodafone spokeswoman told vnunet.com. "But we obviously are going to monitor the situation because our new 3G broadband service may change things."

Rob Langton, mobile broadband marketing manager at T-Mobile, told vnunet.com: "Our strategy has been to kick-start the market and get people using the technology because the whole cost and control issue is a real barrier to a lot of businesses. But now we think we've taken that barrier away."

In defence of its pricing, Vodafone claimed that it currently leads the market and has a good grasp of how much capacity users need.

"We monitor customer usage and we have 80 per cent of the market and we're not seeing people go over that fair usage policy. And if they do it is very rare that we would chase them," said the Vodafone spokeswoman.

Vodafone also insisted that its pricing reflected the service and support structure that came with its products.

"Some people will be led by price, but we find some people who are led by price come back to us once they have tried other competitive services," said the Vodafone spokeswoman.

"Our current pricing structure is representative of the kind of value and service you're going to get."

The two services also differ in coverage. Vodafone already runs in five major UK cities and T-Mobile is looking to launch in more than half of the UK.

"T-Mobile has 65 per cent UK population coverage at the moment and that's all being turned to HSDPA for 1 August," Langton told vnunet.com. "We have a licence obligation of over 80 per cent to meet by the end of 2007."

Langton explained that the T-Mobile HSDPA service will offer download speeds of up to 1.8Mbps at launch, with uploads at 384Kbps.

This will be followed by an interim download speed of 3.6Mbps, before the service migrates to a 7.2Mbps download level by the end of 2007.

"There's a roadmap to deliver technology in the next decade to over 20Mbps," said Langton.