DOWNLOADING fever can lead to raised temperatures.

Take Mr Zhou Yong Liang for example, who got hot under the collar when he saw he was first billed $12,000 for exceeding his data downloading limit.

He had signed up on 13 Sep for SingTel's Broadband on Mobile service, which has a 10GB-limit, for $22.42 a month.

Two days later, the service was activated.

Mr Zhou checked his email, surfed the internet and downloaded episodes of a TV drama series onto his phone.

On 17 Sep, he got a call from SingTel at 10.45am informing him that he had busted the 10GB data limit by 3GB. He was to pay the excess charges of about $12,000 at a bank.

Mr Zhou raised his case in the Lianhe Zaobao letters page last month.

He said he got a second call at 2.16pm that same day from SingTel.

This time, he was told that he would get a 50 per cent discount on the excess charges, bringing the bill down to about $6,000. His account was suspended at about 5pm the same day.

A SingTel spokesman said: 'We have contacted Mr Zhou to explain to him the charging scheme of SingTel's Broadband on Mobile service. We have since resolved his matter.'

He declined to say how, but added that the account user was happy with the resolution. He said that there have been a 'small handful' of customers who had similar complaints to Mr Zhou.

Excess data download costs $3.80 per Mb so 1000Mb, or 1GB, would cost $3,800.

That explains why Mr Zhou was charged about $12,000 at first for downloading the additional 3Gb.

But that payment scheme applies to those who 'pay-as-you-use' while subscribers with a monthly plan, like Mr Zhou, get a 50 per cent discount off the excess charges. In other words, around $6,000.

Singtel monthly subscribers pay 0.19 cents per kilobyte in 2KB blocks for excess data download.

The spokesman said that the 10GB download limit is sufficient for the average person's needs.

He explained that the service is meant for users to access the Internet 'while on the move' for about 15mins at a time.

They can check their email or surf the Internet using their 3.5G phones or devices, which can stream videos, receive TV signals and send large files.

BEWARE EXCESSIVE USE

But some people use up more gigabytes than others.

The spokesman explained that some use their Broadband on Mobile service in place of a modem to download files and videos to their handphone, transmitting the data to their laptops or computers via infrared communication.

For example,downloading a five-minute video file would take up about 100MB.

Downloading a 50-minute long drama serial would use up around 1GB of data.

So downloading about 8hrs of drama would already use up the 10GB download limit for the month.

The spokesman added that SingTel is currently working on a feature to alert users of their data usage when they reach 'a certain threshold', which has not been decided upon yet.

A similar-priced plan with M1 offers a free 5Gb download limit for a $22.42 monthly fee. Excess data download is charged at $4.28 per GB, up to a maximum of 50Gb.

Starhub charges pay-as-you-use customers 1.07cents per kb for excess download charges and 0.32 cents per kb for those on their $5.35 monthly plan.

The maximum data charges are capped at $94.16 for both types of customers.

The article first appeared in The New Paper on Nov 5, 2007