Vodafone cuts mobile data fees in NZ

Vodafone is slashing the costs casual users pay to surf the web and download emails on their mobiles.

From July 27, any Vodafone customers not on a fixed data plan will pay $1 a day for the first 10 megabyte of data they use, then $1 for every additional megabyte.

Currently these casual users pay $11.25 per megabyte.

Vodafone's general manager of products and services Kursten Shalfoon said the company was responding to how customers used their mobiles to access sites like TradeMe, Bebo and Facebook on the move.

"There's a growing customer demand for that."

More and more handsets were designed to surf the internet easily too, he said.

Shalfoon said the new plans wouldn't be loss-making and there was no plans to change the fixed rates plans designed for heavy data users. For example, one fixed plan for about $40 a month gives 200 megabytes of data with 50c charged for every extra megabyte.

He said the plans show Vodafone is moving away from a "walled garden" approach to the internet on mobiles, where people access the web mostly through its Vodafone Live homepage. This will make the experience more like how people use the internet through computers.

- © Fairfax NZ News