Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Vodafone Australia Ends Free P2P and VoIP

   
Apparently, Vodafone Australia data charging process had a design bug, resulting in that the use of some applications - including P2P and VoIP - was not recorded or charged.

It seems like all non-HTTP traffic (or more exactly traffic on port other than 80) was not counted so far - maybe as a result of a very slow evolution from the walled-garden/Proxy gateway concept to open internet. If some people were using P2P file sharing with their wireless dongle, they should expect a "bill shock" in July.

An iTech report article reveals that this is over now - "Vodafone has begun notifying customers [see message - here] that they’ll soon begin charging for data usage that customers have agreed to but haven’t previously been charged for .. Three key areas, namely peer-to-peer connections, VoIP and internet services which “require a personal log-in” (Vodafone gives the examples of Hotmail and Internet banking) have not been counting towards or have not been accurately shown in a user’s data usage as a result of a glitch with Vodafone’s system".

See "Vodafone to fix data usage loophole July 8" - here.

"Dave from Vodafone" says in a whirpool forum [here] that "Currently 3 types of handset data usage [listed above] are not being charged by Vodafone billing systems on postpay and prepay .. We are implementing a fix to correct this. This does not mean you are now going to see extra or excess charges, but instead more accurate data usages, as we will be now capturing all data traffic. Data usage will continue to be charged at the same rate and from under your plan's data allocations"

1 comment:

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