Vodafone has issued one of its customers with a data bill for £11,000 after the users wife downloaded four episodes of the TV sitcom Friends through his mobile phone while abroad. The download was conducted using one of Vodafone's Mobile Broadband data bundles and would have been free had they been conducted in the UK.

It's understood that the download itself began in the UK and resumed after the customer flew to Germany, where roaming data fees are considerably higher. The Telegraph reports:


Sadly Vodafone is not unaccustomed to excessive customer billing and readers may recall the case of Ian Simpson during December last year. Ian, a 29 year old factory worker from Darlington (Yorkshire), ran up a data usage bill of £27,322 after using his mobile as a laptop modem to download several TV programmes (original news).

It’s clear that mobile data services, at least from Vodafone, still have a long way to go before the price, performance and fairness balance can become truly competitive with land line products.