Vodafone feels the heat from customers over data charges

Vodafone has backed down from implementing proposed changes to charging in 1MB blocks due to pressure from customers.

Vodafone Hutchison Australia has backed down from implementing proposed changes to how it tracks the data usage of its customers who are on prepaid mobile plans.

The change would have meant that the minimum data session of a prepaid customer would have counted as 1MB, instead of just 25 kilobytes, potentially exhausting customers' data allowances quicker.

"There's no denying data pricing is confusing, industry-wide. Our intention is to introduce a consistent rate across our prepaid plans, and there's more than one way we can do this," said Cormac Hodgkinson, Vodafone's director of customer care.

"We have decided to not only reverse our decision to introduce per MB charging, we'll also be dropping the existing minimum data session to 1kB for all our prepaid customers."

Vodafone announced the initial change to data usage in January, also stating it would end free access to social networking sites.
The change affects prepaid plans and comes into effect in February.

Vodafone recently announced it will close or rebrand Crazy John's retail stores across Australia as part of a new single-brand strategy.