If you are going to actually use the internet on your phone, it is worth getting a data bundle. After all, if you don't have any free sms in your bundle, the costs can also build up.

AFAIK, the best data packages are from T mobile and 3 (provided you get reception). T mobile do a Web n Walk at £7.50 or so that gives you up to 1Gb a month (Fair use policy). The equavlent O2 package has a 200mb limit, with vodafone coming in at 120mb per month. Orange's equivalent "unlimited" package gives you a measly 30mb per month. Orange are not really suitable for anything more than occassional surfing.

Tell you what, I nearly died when I got my last O2 Bill; My internet through Orange had died and Orange could not fix it for at least 30 days. So I switched to BT and my down time was about 3 weeks. During this down time for my broadband I used my mobile as a modem and connected virtually every day and checked my email, did a bit of surfing to see what I was missing on the download front etc... I reckon that I should have a bill for about £50 extra for that month, no, the total bill was £180 of which call charges were £4 and line rental was £35 per month.
You see thats a mother of a bill for using the internet.

Bloody Orange if they hadnt ballsed up the LLU and kept my account working I would have been OK. But with the cost of cancellation (had to pay my outstanding monthly contract of 7 months) and the huge O2 bill, what a expensive few months... You know I had been with Orange/Wanadoo/Freeserve for at least 5 years. At least with BT my speeds are up (from 2.5 to 5-6mbs download)

Khal

Just found an email I got from O2, basically I asked them about the O2 web daily promotion (this basically allows you to surf unlimited for no more than £1 per day on your phone). Below is the reply I got back off of O2.

"O2 Web Daily promotion. You won't be charged separately for using the Internet in separate sessions. You'll be charged a maximum of £1.00 including VAT (Value Added Tax) per day for the Internet usage. For example any usage under a 1/3Mb, you'll be charged for what is used.

If you use 1/3 Mb of data browsing daily, then you'll be charged as per the usage (£3.00 per Mb). If you use more than 1.0Mb a day, you'll just be charged £1.00 a day.

O2 Web Daily works really simple, if a customer uses 20p worth of data in a day, then the customer will be charged 20p. But, if a customer uses £8.00 worth of data in a single day, the charging stops at £1.00. This charging is set up for each day in the month, meaning a customer can't receive a bill for greater than £31 for data in a month."

Two days ago I got a text from T-Mobile saying that for this week only I can use the mobile internet for free. Sweet, I thought - I use my phone as a modem occasionally, so I'm making full use of that right now.