This is partly a Vodafone thing, partly an NZ thing, but holy goddess, what, the actual hell, is going on with data?

We remember in 2016, prepay data plans were, what, $19 for 1.5GB of data, 300 minutes and 300 texts, something like that? Texts might have been unlimited.

Doesn't matter. Now, we have..... $19 for 1.15GB of data, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts.

Oh benevolent corporate darlings, you made calling unlimited. What's that, you know that calling is one of the least used purposes of a phone? And that data is the most? Then why in the name of Inanna's left tit did you make calling unlimited and charge out the ass for data!

Seriously One NZ are a massive massive part of this, but it seems to just be that data prices in this country have either not moved in years, or gotten worse. Trust us, we would know; we're from Seattle, and where we come from, unlimited mobile data (yes, darlings, there truly is something called unlimited) is US$25 a month. that's NZ$39.43. Taking into account Washington sales tax call it NZ$43-44. For that same price we are currently getting so-called "endless" data, wow, we get a whole 4GiB before we're dropped to sub-T1 speeds?

Wow, how truly generous and loving you are. not. This country is no longer connected to the world by, as it was in 2006, a coiled run of #8 fencing wire, sheep, pointy rural accents, and hope. We in fact have FTTP in this country.

Y'know that thing that provides everyone an unlimited home internet connec- oh wait, never mind, it's not everyone, now is it? There are still quite a number of folks who don't have fiber, or, y'know, go out? People do, in fact, leave their houses in this country, it seems to be quite the thing.

But we all have stupid dinky little data plans that give us the same amount of data as a T-Mobile $15 data plan, at half the speeds, with no IPV6, and worse coverage. Gods this country's mobile infra is... no, wait, the infra is great. The companies just really, really, really want to charge us for data like it's 2006 and we're still starting and ending data sessions on our Nokia E61I running Symbian.