One has to wonder when you read news like this, where Orange France is stating that their 500MB per month data plan, tied to the iPhone, excludes pretty much everything other than email and web browsing. So no VoIP, modem access for your laptop, or even newsgroups (??).

In Spain, Vodafone has been toting 5GB/month plans for some time now, with similar “fair use” policies. What is exactly the point of having such huge data plans, when all you can do is squint at the web on a tiny screen, or read your email - without trying to open attachments which are even harder to read. Granted, the iPhone has represented a leap in usability in these two fields, with fantastic web browsing, and very usable email where attachments can at least be useful. The only problem is the iPhone is one device lacking many functionalities other platforms already enjoy, such as VoIP, decent IM, and…newsgroup access. These will come for sure, only because there is a very dedicated community of hackers porting and writing applications for it.

During my first month of iPhone use, when the novelty wants to make you try everything and, for example, browse the web when you don’t really need to, but just because it’s so cool - I went through about 70MB of data. Peanuts, compared to the 1GB plan I had with Vodafone…