It seems that mobile phone users in the UK will pay less for data downloads in case they are subscribers of the wireless operator Orange. The company is reported to have drastically reduced the cost for its basic mobile data package. While the carrier used to offer two tariffs, namely £5.00 for 10MB and £6.38 for 250MB, it seems that there will be only one tariff in the near future, £4.25, which would provide users with 500MB of data downloads.

“In today’s economy, businesses and their employees need a break. We know everybody’s working hard so there’s enough capacity in our new data bundle to combine work with some fun such as social networking and entertainment that doesn’t penalise either staff or the bill payer,” said Martin Lyne.

He also stated that the new offering came as a great package option for a certain segment of the market, namely those users that are seeking a variety of multimedia services, while also allowing the company to increase its customer base. The new tariff will become available for the mobile phone carrier's business customers that have a new voice or data package on a monthly pay basis.

The YouGov research, commissioned by Orange, showed that a quarter of women would rather spend work downtime getting in touch with their friends or family, and that they would do that through social networking sites and email, while one woman out of ten would spend that time shopping online. By comparison, 50 percent of men would spend their time during a working day surfing the Web.

Given the latest growth of Internet usage directly from the mobile phone, it’s no wonder that the tariffs are lowered. Hopefully, more operators will follow Orange, and users will be able to access their favorite news or social networking sites much cheaper.