Businessman gets £11,000 phone bill

For downloading four episodes of friends

4 March 2008 11:26 GMT / By Katie Scott

Have you heard of latest Friends episode - "The one where a Friends mobile download cost £11,000"?

A British businessman has returned from a 2-day trip to Germany to a record mobile phone bill.

According to reports, his wife had used his "unlimited" phone broadband package to order four episodes of friends, which should have been free.

But this was only if they were received entirely in the UK, and, while the download was still in progress, the businessman travelled to Germany.

The download continued for 12 hours, automatically resuming on his arrival in Germany.

The businessman contacted Vodafone upon his return but has not commented to the press.

Vodafone, however, has said that it informs customers of the charges they can incur when using their phone outside of the UK and will contact them to alert them if they hit certain charges.

But The Times reports it did admit it will take significantly longer to contact customers to warn them when they go over their quote when they are out of the country.

This has heightened the debate about roaming mobile phone charges.

Already, Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, has stated firmly that his organisation is going to intervene to slash fees saying: "We will be looking to take action".

And the European Commission is also going to take a hardline with mobile phone operators.

Viviane Reding, the European Union commissioner for information, society and media, has set the deadline of 1 July for phone companies to cut their fees for downloading data and texting while abroad.

"Sending a text message or downloading data in another country should not be substantially more expensive than at home", Reding has said, adding: "Higher retail charges abroad must be justified or they will have to disappear".

In separate but connected news, Truphone is to abolish its mobile roaming charges worldwide.

In a statement sent to Pocket-lint, it explains: "From anywhere on the planet, Truphone's customers can call countries in its 'Tru Zone', on their mobile, for 3p per minute to landlines and 15p per minute to mobiles".

The 40 countries in the "Tru Zone" include most EU countries, Australia, Japan and Russia.

Calls to some countries - including China, Hong Kong, USA and Canada - will cost 3p per minute to both landlines and mobiles.

Truphone has also killed off roaming charges for receiving mobile calls abroad.

Truphone-to-Truphone calls remain free, no matter where in the world the two parties are.