Lots of people were moaning about the low amount of data on Vodafone NZ’s plans. So here’s some solid usage data from, well, my phone.
In the past month (as I’ve had the phone for a month so far), I’ve used a grand total of
28.2MB received
3MB sent
Yes, you read that right. Thirty three megs of data in a month. Now, I’m not a big youtube viewer, but I have downloaded (OTA) music, email (from exchange for a while, and also from google), a LOT of webpages (this is now my default browsing device at home), applications etc etc. And all of that has kept me under 10% of the smallest plan which VFNZ provides (200meg).
Why, you ask? Well, I spend quite a bit of time (like, 80%) in one of three places:
- Home. And there, I have WIFI.
- Work. Which also has WIFI.
- The Tube. Where there is nothing at all (yay offline email processing)
The rest of the time, I’m either out and about – so I’m in 3G – or I’m around London (specificly Canary Wharf) where there is either BT Openzone (free wifi for me) or The Cloud (ditto). So I guess I’d put thru maybe 1GB/month, but only a small fraction of that is on 3G.
So, I wonder, if VFNZ included wifi from, say, CafeNet or similar, would the data issue be irrelevant? This makes the low end pricing plans a lot more attractive. Looks like VFNZ has redone their pricing, too – no more 1GB plan at all!
CafeNet coverage is very patchy and wouldn’t do it.
Any reports of the Death of 1GB Plan are greatly exaggerated. The 1GB plan is still there but you have to go to a store to sign up for it.
The key thing with the VFNZ plans is the lack of free WiFi – mainly because NZ doesn’t have good WiFi coverage. Sure, you can get Cafenet if you’re near a hotspot, but nothing like over in the UK. And Cafenet isn’t cheap at $20 for 70MB or $80 for 350MB. There’s a few people trying to get Mesh WiFi set up through Meraki devices, but not sure how far this has got.