Virgin Mobile Customers Shocked By Huge Data Bills

Another one for our watch out for mobile broadband rip-offs file: David Neiger at APC reports that many Virgin customers who have used their phone as a modem have been shocked to receive large bills after being charged a high-priced casual data rate of 1.5 cents a kilobyte. VIrgin customers can purchase a more reasonably priced data bundle at $15 for a gigabyte, but as Neiger points out, that’s still more expensive than almost anything else on the market. (The company claims prices will drop shortly; we’ll see.) As always, the golden rule is to check the conditions very carefully before using your mobile as a data device.