Data Tariff - there isn't one :-(

[technoboy]

One great disappointment for me, in regard to the Virgin tariffs, is that there is no decent provision for those who want to use data. OK you can pay at the rate of £5/MB but that is very expensive.
There are a range of tariffs, all made up of minutes and texts. I get 300 texts but I might only use 10 in a month.
I am using minutes to access the Net on GSM as this is the only cost effective way of doing this. It is slow an inefficient.
If Virgin Mobile do read this then PLEASE could you look seriously at providing a minutes and data deal as an alternative to the minutes and text deal. What I don't want is 'give us £x extra per month'. It seems that all the mobile phone companies offer data as an add-on but never as an inclusive deal. They either assume that they can make more money that way or they think that there isn't much call for a minutes and data tariff. I believe that they are wrong about the latter. The only reason why data use hasn't taken off is the cost of the data and the poor deals.
I get the 300/300 deal for £10/month, I can see them offering a minutes/data tariff but with reduced minutes and that wouldn't necessarily be a good deal.

So, what do others think about this?

[darcysarto]

I can't believe they've not got a data tarriff 5 quid a MB is absolutely ridiculous when you look at t-mobiles £7.50 UNLIMITED monthly use and Orange do a 30mb FOR £8

[Stephen]

I agree with you about the expense. As I am staff I get a reduction in my bill but I still end up with high bills due to the cost of data.

In fact I just switched to T-Mobile to make use of the Web and Walk package as I just got the N95.

I have heard that Virgin may not be able to offer a data tariff due to the conditions of the deal with T-mobile.

[tybalt21]

I have heard that Virgin may not be able to offer a data tariff due to the conditions of the deal with T-mobile.

Indeed you are correct, to the best of my knowledge it's simply down to T Mobiles new tv promotion of their online mobile services fronted by the N-95 which I have heard alot of bad reviews about anyway, I tried an n73 for a while and didn't like it, thought it was very slow, anyway.....

If they allowed Virgin to offer something similar to their own packages it would in theory mean they could lose new customers to them instead, or at least that's what i reckon.