So o2 has announced that it is scrapping its unlimited mobile data plans in favour of Smartphone tariffs. These range from 500mb plans, costing £25-£35 a month, to 1GB plans for a staggering £60 a month.

Being an o2 customer I was obviously a little cheesed off, but to be honest, it makes perfect sense.

I spend more of my time tweeting on Tweet Deck, reading the news on my Guardian app, checking in on Foursquare and updating my Facebook status on my iPhone than I do calling people or texting. It seems that I am not alone; Vodafone recently announced unprecedented revenue growth in its data services and expects this growth to continue.

Data access is taking over as the primary driver for mobile technology, leaving phone calls and texts by the wayside. With the iPhone 4 adding technology that further thrusts it into the Skype world; of course mobile operators are going to focus their billing on data usage rather than voice minutes.

But there needs to be give and take. By all means charge me for my data (reasonably) but then give me unlimited free phone calls and texts in return.  I can assure you I won’t use them much.

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• UK’s O2 to impose 3G data limits for iPhone 4 users (engadget.com)
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• O2 to end iPhone ‘unlimited’ data (guardian.co.uk)