Vodafone under fire for "primitive" billing

Vodafone's newly launched GPRS mobile internet service has been labelled "primitive" by a leading analyst.

Vodafone is offering consumers free software that turns GPRS phones into modems. Billing is done on a flat rate system based on a predicted megabit's worth of downloads per month.

The service is aimed at business users who are prepared to pay high GPRS bills and who need to log on while travelling. Transmission speeds are similar to a home modem link.

However, Bernt Ostergaard, telecommunications analyst at Giga Web, said the flat rate billing system can't differentiate between service levels which weakens the product's potential demand.

"It's really very primitive," Ostergaard said. "Charging for the number of bytes transmitted per month, rather than a specified level of service, as Vodafone is doing, is GPRS at its most simplistic form."

Ostergaard said that Vodafone's billing tariff tries to please everyone but ends up with a service no one wants. Heavy users will be turned off by the premium rate, while quality business users will be dissatisfied with the lack of service quality guarantees.

"An example of this would be a 14-year-old downloading a big mp3 file. He doesn't care about overall quality but won't want a large bill, whereas a business man transmitting a short work file will want zero errors and will pay more.

"If a carrier can only charge by the packet like Vodafone, it will fall down as it will dissatisfy both customers who want different levels of service."

Even Vodafone admits the billing system is far from ideal, but claims it is the best way to operate given the limitations of existing technology.

The only technology available at the current time that can provide IP networks with the quality of service required for service level agreements is multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), according to Vodafone GPRS product manager Paul Stonedge.

He said: "No GPRS infrastructure manufacturers support MPLS yet. The evolving roadmap of functionality in GPRS and 3G means it takes time to integrate things. Quality of service may be available next year, but it's difficult to know."

The GPRS network only extends as far as the UK at the moment. Vodafone is in talks to establish bilateral roaming agreements within its European family and other telcos.