A typical days use for me is reading a couple of news websites a couple of times a day, catching up on facebook but seldom posting and receiving my emails which I rarely answer (unless urgent) preferring to answer them from my computer. I will occasionally check some other websites and use maps if in town, and of course I’ll download the odd app, but the novelty on that has worn off so that is rare too.

I would like to see evidence that the average user uses only 200mb a month, that seems to be impossible to me. And, if this is true then why change things? It doesn’t make sense.

At this rate I will not be able to afford to continue using my phone as a smartphone so I may as well sell it and get myself a cheap little phone for making phone calls only. I cannot understand a company such as O2 going backwards like this,

To whinge about O2 building out a network that wasn’t designed for todays phone in a manner that indicates they are alone in this is unfair. All of the major networks have this problem – each cell tower only has limited backhaul to it, and with the increasing speeds in the wireless side of the technology it’s now a very real risk that one or two users could saturate a tower’s data backhaul on their own – especially so in rural areas.

This problem is one of economics – more capacity to the towers costs a lot more money both in capex and opex. It remains to be seen that 3′s network to which you plan to defect is any better once they actually start to pick up customer volume. Remember that 3 were the ones who completely “missed the point” (read: effectively limited how much data users on ‘unlimited data’ tariffs could use) of mobile internet when they started out, only offering walled garden sites.

Anyway, long story short, this is something that will eventually affect all operators, and the truth is that capacity costs, much the same as we saw in the home broadband market.

I’ve got to be honest, I have an HTC desire I bought on another network but currently use on O2 and I only clock in around a gig a month and I am what I would consider a heavy user – I have two gmail accounts and my exchange account on the maximum check frequency (push for exchange), twitter and facebook feeds on maximum frequency, and unless I sit and watch streaming media or download files (I do occasionally download dj sets directly to my handset, because I can actually do that on my device, natch), I won’t break 150meg-200meg. I use google maps, and various other network centric apps, too, such as Waze.

I would be at a loss to come up with 9 gig a month of usage without streaming movie trailers or iplayer half an hour a day, at which point I would go blind from squinting at a small-ass screen. I suppose I could listen to streaming radio all day every day but I sit at a computer all day with a broadband connection – it makes much more sense to use that.

The reality is that huge minute and bandwidth allowances are much the same as huge diskspace and bandwidth allowances in hosting – they look impressive, but as soon as people start to use them the performance for everyone else starts to suffer, and eventually you either lose your account or the provider sees sense and starts to set real limits.

It isn’t economically feasible to promise unlimited anything, and particularly not when it comes to mobile data which relies on dozens, hundreds or thousands of fixed capacity leased lines or microwave links depending on how much you move around the country.

I reset my data stats this morning, and will be monitoring my actual data usage carefully until June 24 but the faster new iPhone and multitasking/ background apps, everyone’s internet usage is going to go up and that 500mb is going to be a very small ceiling height for most people very soon.

The thing is, the iPhone has opened up many new possibilities. In London yesterday, for example, I used Maps to find my position relative to London Bridge tube station, I used the app, ‘Vicinity’, to see what restaurants were nearby and I checked my email and facebook accounts, making a couple of responses there and then, and I also tweeted several times during the day.

These are all things you can’t do on a regular mobile phone, yet are normal for smart phones. My point is that anyone using 500Mb a month is simply not using their smart phone. They’ve just got an Apple cellphone. As they discover all the new uses so their data consumption will grow. That’s where the growth is coming from – people starting to use the power of the technology.

Until wifi is widespread – in the ether around us like your favourite radio station – we will have to use the cellphone network for data even though it’s so slow.

At these prices, O2 will be very rich and we will be very broke.