This caught my eye just moments ago from the T-Mobile UK Official Twitter account:

Superb phone for #business: #HTC Desire, unlimited texts, unlimited Calls, unlimited internet for 20 per month: http://bit.ly/d9k021

“Wow!” I thought, “20 quid a month? For a desire? How are they doing that I wondered?”

I clicked through.

Here’s what I saw:

It’s not 20 quid a month. It’s 35/month but there’s a discount for the first 3 months.

This offer itself is perfectly fine.

It is, however, patently RIDICULOUS to advertise the phone at 20/month.

The website even says: 20 a month (24 months) in bright T-Mobile branded purple.

That tells me the offer is 20 per month for 24 months, right?

No.

Because there’s more clarifying text underneath saying “(for the first 3 months, 35 thereafter)”.

Absolutely ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous.

Do they think our heads button up the back?

This demonstrates yet another further erosion of the English language when it comes to mobile operators.

“Unlimited?”

Oh it’s unlimited. Until you hit the limit.

Or it’s ‘fair use’. Until we decide that fair use means a 500mb limit. (I’m looking at you, Vodafone). So you can have unlimited data. On a 500mb limit.

How long before T-Mobile starts running TV adverts for the HTC Desire at ‘20 pounds per month’ with a disclaimer saying that 20 pounds actually equals 35 pounds.

They didn’t even say in big letters on the HTC Desire special offer that it’s “20/month 3-month special offer” or anything like that. No. Ridiculous.

Congratulations to the data team at T-Mobile UK who have been named Dongle on The Move Winner in the Broadband Genie Road Trip 2010 Awards.

The chaps over at Broadband Genie took USB dongles from each of the major UK networks and tested them out during a two-day 350 mile road trip. They then subjected the dongles to a series of real-world tests (podcast downloads, youtube/spotify streaming and so on).

T-Mobile came out top in the download speed test — knocking back a top speed of over 3Mb. Nifty. This score led T-Mobile to trounce the competition on average across the other tests. I’m pleased to see Vodafone ranked reasonably well in most of the tests but managed only a miserable 0.3Mb upload top speed compared to 3UK’s shocking 1.6Mb top speed.

You can read the full analysis on the Broadband Genie post.

If you’re on the hunt, T-Mobile will give you a Mobile Broadband USB dongle for 8.99 plus a tenner top-up. Data will cost you 2 per day, 7 for the week and 15 for the month. Entirely reasonable. Plus, for the month of April, if you do a 2 top up, you’ll get 30 days free data.

Goodness me the cost of broadband has come down quite substantially hasn’t it? If you’d like to pay monthly, T-Mobile will give you a free dongle and unlimited (3GB fair use) data for a tenner a month (for the first 3 months) then 15/month.

I’m still turned on — in a geeky way — by 3UK’s PAYG MiFi deal. 69.99 buys you the MiFi unit bundled with 3GB of data usage valid for 3 months. Again, that looks very reasonable to me.

MiFi makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. I’ve been using this Novatel MiFi unit I was given to test for ages and it is a simply fantastic experience. I love the fact that more than one device can connect to it — and that I don’t have to mess around with connection screens and software installations. Just press the ‘on’ button and your devices are ready to connect.