Strolling through the streets of New York this evening on the way back to the hotel from a meeting I took a look at my BlackBerry and saw the familiar wind-up text from Vodafone. The message reads:

Just to let you know, you’ve used over 3MB of data which has cost you 3 per MB so far. Once you use more than 5MB in a day, the charge becomes 15 inc VAT for each 5MB.

I’ve written about this before. I don’t know why Vodafone make these messages so cryptic.

Shouldn’t the message read, “You’ve used 9?”

No. Of course not. That’s quite expensive. Much better to ease the customer into a false sense of security — to try and avoid too much bill shock. Indeed, the more confusion and the lower the perception of costs, the better.

It’s ridiculous. It’s not just an issue confined to Vodafone — Three, for example, is a lot more direct about the costs in their text updates. The fundamental issue is that the rates are still far too high — Vodafone’s team are obviously aware of this or they wouldn’t have felt the need to disguise and divert attention from them.

It’s a sad state of affairs, it really is. I decided to record a video — for posterity’s sake — of how I was feeling about it. I’m intending to be able to look back at this in years (5? 10?) to come when this is no longer an issue. I wonder what the marketplace will look like at that point. What will the phrase ‘carrier’ or ‘operator’ or ‘roaming’ mean in 5 years time? Or 10 years? It is realistically going to need a decade before I can stride between geographies without having to care too much about the resulting data costs?

If you’ve got 10 minutes and you’re in the mood for an outpouring of emotional geekish disbelief, click on and tell me what you think.

What’s your view: Will the roaming issues we know today have gone away by 2020?

[Note: Nigel on Google+ points out that Vodafone do offer a 'rest of the world' roaming deal -- 5 for 25mb a day and that is valid in the United States. Although this is certainly a lot better than this 3 per megabyte nonsense, my key point is the fact it's still crazy pricing. For instance 5 per day for my 2-week trip equates to 70.]

I made the following video with Google’s Search Story service. The first search? For the definition of “Unlimited”. Heh.

Have a good weekend…

Right then I’m looking forward to making use of the new Air New Zealand mobile facilities to be launched toward the end of the year as the Straits Times reports:

AIR New Zealand is planning to let some passengers send text messages and emails mid-flight by the end of the year but fellow travellers need not worry – phone calls will not be allowed.

New Zealand’s national carrier said it expects to let people send and receive text messages and emails on their iPhones, Blackberries and GSM mobiles on its new 777-300 aircrafts by November.

The new service will also enable customers to use their Netbooks or laptops in conjunction with their mobile broadband connection to access the Internet. The airline said the new mobile text and data service is being introduced after feedback from passengers who want to stay connected on long-haul flights but it is subject to regulatory approval.

I think banning voice is the way ahead — and it’s critical to ensure that people swap their handsets to silent mode as well. The last thing you want is a 10-hour flight to LAX with ‘bing bing’ BlackBerry Messenger alerts every 5 minutes.

I often fly Air New Zealand from LAX to LHR. Although it’s a little bit inconvenient doing the hop from San Francisco to LAX, I’ve always found the Air New Zealand service phenomenal and reasonable in terms of cost. I’m looking forward to being able to do email and make the odd online query as necessary during my flights. I wonder what it’ll cost?

Finally. Finally someone has setup a useful worldwide data roaming service at a reasonable charge. Vodafone’s international service doesn’t quite cut it for me, especially when I’m only getting 25mb for whatever it is, 5 or something. I use 25mb of data just getting out of bed in the morning.

Enter XCom Global. They have done the arsing around on your behalf. All you need to do is hire the USB broadband stick or MiFi unit and pay them the fee ($14.95/day for the USB stick and $17.95/day for the Novatel Wireless MiFi unit).

Genius.

Granted, $17.95 will add up. But that’s proper use. Proper data use. Unlimited fair use. No stupid silly limits. If you’re going to America for 10 days and you want unlimited data, that’ll cost you $179.50 (if you’d like a MiFi) or $149.50 if you just want the USB stick. First let’s convert that into pounds. 125 and 104 respectively.

Let’s compare that with paying Vodafone for international roaming in the USA at their published rate of 3 per meg. Assume I end up using an average of 70mb per day, right? That would cost me 210 per day or 2,100 for the 10 day trip. Now the XCom rates look positively saintly.

Of course you could just buy a MiFi and buy a local sim card when you arrive in the States. But if you don’t want the hassle, do consider the XCom offer.

Orange have announced their iPad data price plans for the United Kingdom.

I was bracing myself, but actually, it’s not too bad. In fact, provided I forget what I’m already paying for my data dongle, the pricing looks fairly reasonable.

First of all, you can pay-for-what-you-use. That simply costs 0.05 per megabyte. (Do you remember when, just a few years ago, you had to pay upwards of 4.00 per megabyte?) I quite like that plan. You’ll also get a 10 credit upon activation which, accordingly to my fag-packet calculations, will give you 20,000 megabytes or 20GB to use at any time.

Then there’s an iPad Daily bundle. That’s simply 2 quid-per-day and entitles you to 200mb of data valid for one day until midnight. So, unless you’re up early, it’s not really 24-hours. But you know, based on my usage of the iPad (in terms of taking it out of the home/office where there’s constant WiFi), that would work quite well for me. I could imagine using that quite nicely.

Then there’s the iPad Weekly bundle, valid for 7 days until midnight which costs 7.50 and comes with 1GB of data allowance. Again, not bad on the face of it.

And for those tempted by a monthly price plan arrangement, iPad Monthly 15 (15/month) gets you 3GB of data allowance and unlimited BT Openzone usage.

And iPad Monthly 25 (25/month) gets you 10GB of data allowance per month and unlimited BT Openzone.

I think it’s genius pricing. Genius. Indeed the whole arrangement is genius. The chances are you already have a data plan, dongle or similar with your operator, however the convenience of not having to arse around with sim cards will, I reckon, see a heck of a lot of people opting for these.

If I had to choose right now, I’d probably do the per-meg one, if only because I am tickled pink at the concept of being charged only 5p per megabyte. I think that’s a nice sweet-spot for me personally.

Which would you choose?

Are you even going to bother with an iPad?

And if so, are you going to get the 3G version?

Pre-order from the 10th of May…