Well this sucks…

From April 19th:

vodafone_explains

Vodafone has finally provided an explanation for the removal of VoIP features from the Nokia N95, and apparently it’s all for our own good. A Vodafone statement says the mobile operator doesn’t offer its own VoIP service because it doesn’t believe it’s a mature technology.

It goes on to say it require “in-depth testing, a solid end-to-end customer experience, billing integration and customer service support which is not currently available”.

You can bet that it’s the lack of billing integration which is key here.

…which I got from Simon, and which after some digging I found is followed-up by:

vodafone_data_tariff

Vodafone’s new pricing model for data comes in on 1 June and at a glance seems fair enough – if you use less than 0.5MB in a day you’re charged at a penny for every 5KB you use (£2 a MB), go over that and the next 14.5MB is free, then you’re back to a penny for every 5KB used.

Most users should fall somewhere in below the 15MB limit, and the current rate is £2.35 a MB, so everyone should be better off.

Well, not quite everyone.

Slipped in to the conditions of use is a clause stating that VoIP and peer-to-peer services (P2P) are excluded from the offer, billed separately at £2 a megabyte, with a minimum of 5 pence per session. Skype is listed as an example of a VoIP service, but the definition of P2P is much broader, including “instant messenger services, text messaging clients, or file sharing”.

Upon reading this I wondered “how will they possibly know what sort of traffic you are using – Bittorrent is encrypted and Skype too, with random ports used?” only to find the journo had spotted the same problem for the same reasons:

Vodafone won’t comment on how it’s going to identify such traffic, though there are concerns that anything other than web browsing might be considered peer-to-peer and thus be subject to the separate charge. Encrypted connections could well fall foul – it would be impossible for Vodafone to identify the application being used, leaving anyone regularly and securely checking email open to high charges.

Vodafone does say it’ll be offering a mobile internet tariff, but isn’t revealing any details and it’s likely it’s waiting to see how customers respond to the new data pricing before making a decision.

Personally I think my solution will be to avoid Vodafone where possible; I remember the network vendors who tried doing this to ISP connections, and before that to corporate firewalls, and it didn’t work then, and it’ll be a lot harder to do now.

Give it up, guys. Sell bandwidth.