Here’s a Gizmodo Pro-tip: If you own a smartphone that’s capable of accessing the internet, make sure you’ve got a data plan as well. Otherwise you’ll end up like South Australian MP Russell Wortley who ended up with a $10,500 bill from Telstra after his son downloaded a couple of footy games to his iPhone over NextG.
Because his iPhone didn’t have a data plan on Telstra, the MP was charged at the going rate of $2 per MB for the data used. Apparently over the course of an hour and a bit Wortley’s son racked up $4000 worth of data charges, and $3000 on another occasion.
It’s kind of hard to understand how a supposedly free footy game can suck down 2GB worth of data in an hour – that’s a lot of data for a game – but if nothing else, this case might help Australia catch up to Europe and the U.S. when it comes to killing off the whole concept of “Bill Shock”
Ed’s note: I’ve been meaning to write this story up for a couple of days, but wasn’t able to get to it. But it sort of became a priority after I was talking about it with the guys on the 7pm Project last night, the clip of which you can watch below (it starts at about the 8:30 mark)
[Adelaide Now – Thanks Hamish!]