O2 goes to great lengths to say very little

Many unhappy O2 customers today, as the company announced that it's stopping 'unlimited' data deals. Instead, you get a gigabyte a month on the £60 tariff, or 500 MB on the £25-£35. Existing contracts won't be changed and new ones won't start being capped until October, but the message is clear: if you want to actually use all those great things you bought your iPhone for, you'll have to pay more.

O2 initially told us that this was because users wanted more clarity and a better experience: there's always been a limit in 'unlimited' deals, but mobile phone operators have been extremely unwilling to say what it is or how you can tell when you're getting near it. (Whether this is related to their theory that informing customers how much they'll be charged is unreasonable, I cannot say.)

And it's true, there is a stupendous lack of clarity. We went through O2's terms and conditions to find out where this limit on unlimited was, but failed - although, as the document is getting on for twice as tall as I am, this may not be entirely our fault.

The real reason for this is that mobile phone companies want to make more money, and it's expensive to add more capacity just because people want to use what you've sold them. Indeed, O2 appears to think it unreasonable (again!) to do so - my favourite quote from the news story:

"Asked whether O2's network was unable to cope with the rising levels of mobile data usage, the company's spokeswoman said such an analysis was "easy and oversimplified".

Not, you'll notice, "wrong".

"We have to be able to manage demand," she said. "We can't be building a six-lane highway every time the traffic increases — which it is, doubling every four months."

If only O2 - and the other operators, who are rarely innocent in such matters - said what the problems really were, priced their service accordingly, and were straightforward in their terms and conditions, then perhaps we'd be happy to pay up and take them at their word.