Costly way to download TV

Having broadband connectivity irrelevant of your location can prove costly as one couple found after the wife had initiated the download of four episodes of Friends via her husbands mobile phone. Aalas the downloads did not complete while in the UK, but when the phone was roaming in Germany resulting in a £11,000 bill from Vodafone.

This should perform as a prompt to anyone with a data connection via a mobile device to make certain that large downloads are suspended or cancelled while abroad. Although this can be tricky to accomplish with the amount of software that auto-updates these days.

Similar stories like fall right into the lap of Viviane Reding, the EU commissioner for information, society and media who is pressuring the mobile companies to decrease the cost of roaming with regard to data transfer. Undoubtedly it should be simple enough for mobile providers to tag on to the various ‘welcome’ text messages you receive when roaming abroad, details of data charges on the network you are using.