Prepare to be flabbergasted

When we speculated, in the absence of any hard information, two weeks ago that the possible pricing for Vodafone's 3G service would be in the order of €50 to €60 a month, we thought we were being over-cautious, hoping against hope that it would be cheaper.

Now we realise why Voda was so keen to divorce the launch of the product from the revelation of the actual pricing: it's going to be astoundingly expensive. The base product starts at €70 with a higher tier at €100. Are these guys for real?

For €70 a month, for instance, you could get Sky Digital's top package - movies, sport, etc - and still have money left over for a couple of pints.

Vodafone tries to compensate by bundling 300 minutes of anytime, any network calls plus makes many of its signature services such as Premiership goals and movie trailers free until early 2005. Then it reverts to €10 and €5 a month respectively - a fair price.

Vodafone Ireland has been the first to admit that it will be late 2005 before 3G becomes a mass-market phenomenon and at these prices there's no trouble understanding why.