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Singapore. A gigantic mobile phone bill has become a talking point on the Internet after a SingTel customer made a posting on his Facebook account.

In a case that has highlighted high data charges users may face for using smartphones to surf the Internet and access applications overseas, Kave Goh claimed online that he was billed almost 350,000 Singapore dollars (US$ 270,124) after spending 17 days in Taiwan last month.

He posted on his Facebook page a screen shot of a portion of his bill. But SingTel says the bill stated clearly that he would have to pay about 12,000 Singapore dollars- not the entire sum. Most of the charges were waived because Goh had used SingTel's Bridge DataRoam plan while in Taiwan, a SingTel spokesman said.

So for a flat charge of about 14 Singapore dollars a day, he could have unlimited data access as long as he connected through SingTel's affiliated telco Taiwan Mobile. He downloaded the bulk of the data, about 15GB worth, under this plan. But on three instances, he had logged on to another network, Far EasTone, and used about 600MB.

The SingTel spokesman said the Taiwan Mobile charges came up to 336,000 Singapore dollars - but Goh did not have to pay because he had the dataroam plan.

However, he had to pay for the rest of the data usage which amounted to about 12,000 Singapore dollars - or 20 Singapore dollars per megabyte.

"The 12,000 Singapore dollars charges are the charges owing to the non-Bridge Alliance operator," SingTel said.

It noted that the first page of Goh's bill and the final summary showed clearly that he would not have to pay the 336,000 Singapore dollars Taiwan Mobile charges.

SingTel said it was in negotiations with Goh on his bill.

Goh declined to comment when contacted on Wednesday, saying he was hesitant to say more until negotiations were concluded. But by Wednesday afternoon, all postings about his bill were gone.

He had said that he was shocked when he first saw the bill and had been in touch with SingTel's staff.

SingTel also said that it had been in touch with Goh while he was overseas. As part of its standard practice, it alerted him via SMS and phone calls of his high data usage during his trip.

Typically, an SMS would say how much data had been used, and a call from the customer service department would provide more information such as cost.

SingTel declined to say if there were cases of other customers racking up very high charges for data usage abroad.

Wong Onn Chee, director at tech security firm Infotect, said consumers need to monitor data usage overseas as huge bills can be chalked up easily.

For instance, streaming videos to a mobile phone for an hour could mean more than 50MB of data used, he noted.

Wong added that the Government's earlier announcements to shield users from bill shocks would help reduce such cases in future.

Earlier this year in March, the Infocomm Development Authority had announced that mobile operators would be required to provide an option for consumers to limit their data roaming usage in a monthly billing cycle to 100 Singapore dollars.

This is expected to kick in by the first quarter of next year.

Reprinted courtesy of Straits Times Indonesia. To subscribe to Straits Times Indonesia and/or the Jakarta Globe call 021 2553 5055.