The Communications Ombudsman has called on mobile phone providers to provide greater clarity when it comes to unlimited data plans on mobile phones to help consumers avoid running up huge bills with downloads.

One of the great things about today’s range of exciting smart phones is that you can take great delight in downloading a variety of content whilst on the go with just the touch of a button or screen. However, what many phone owners forget is that they could end up paying the price for these downloads even if they are on so called unlimited data plans.

There are many people who have been caught out by this, as they have assumed that unlimited means that they can download to their heart’s content with the risk of any charges when in fact there have been limits in place and they have ended up paying through the nose for exceeding them.

The communications ombudsman is now calling on mobile phone companies to provide greater clarity when it comes to unlimited data plans so that consumers do not run the risk of bill shock stemming from not even realizing that they were exceeding their data limits because they did not know that there were any data limits in place.

The communications ombudsman, Lewis Shand Smith, said: “This is an emerging problem which we think could cause real consumer detriment – we want mobile phone companies to take action before it becomes more prevalent. Some mobile phone packages offer ‘unlimited’ downloads and consumers may believe that their mobile phone bill won’t go above a certain amount. Consumers may fail to realise is that there is a small asterisk next to the word ‘unlimited’ which refers to small print stating that there is in fact a limit which, if exceeded, will incur further charges.”