Vodafone Glitch Made BitTorrent, VoIP Data Free

Oops. Turns out Vodafone Australia hasn’t been charging mobile customers for data use involving peer-to-peer, password-protected web-based email and banking sites, or VoIP services.

If you’re a heavy user of these services, be aware that your bills could increase after the billing correction kicks in on July 8. The good news is there will be no back-dating of charges for such data use prior to this date.

When contacted for comment, Vodafone supplied the following official statement:

Following a recent review of our billing systems, from the 8th July customers using the following types of mobile handset data will incur charges: • The use of peer-to-peer file sharing websites that allow users to share content amongst a closed community.

• The use of Voice over IP (VoIP) applications that customers may have previously downloaded from the internet to their phone.

• The use of services via the internet that require a personal log-in (e.g. web-based email and internet banking). These charges are in line with customers’ existing contracts but were not previously billed. There will be no back-dating of charges relating to these types of usage prior to 8th July 2011. The correction will affect both standard internet access from a handset and also ‘tethered’ access that involves using a mobile as a modem to connect a computer to the internet.

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