You may have thought that there were only two ways to go about organising your phone bill but T-Mobile has come up with a new solution – Pay Once. It’s not quite as deliciously inviting as the name suggests but it’s certainly interesting to see a fresh approach to the tariff structure.

The way it works is that you pay £179.99 in exchange for a silver BlackBerry Pearl 8110, like the one in the picture, with a 2-megapixel camera and GPS, and in return you get as much data as you can crunch in a year. There’s no voice or texts included, so you’re still topping up for that lot but, then, maybe you won’t need to if you use VoIP and web based SMS services?

It works out as around £15 a month to put it into some kind of perspective, so we’re not necessarily talking about a bargain here, just a different way of doing things. Nothing’s set in stone as yet but the idea is that, once your year is up, you’ll either be able to Pay Once Again at the same cost with an upgraded handset or slightly less if you just want to keep your Pearl. Interesting.

I don’t think Pay Once will change the world but, marketing aside, an extra package probably doesn’t cost T-Mobile an awful lot in the long term, so what the hell? It’s probably worth a punt for them and it certainly keeps them looking progressive.

Pay Once is available from 1st May and I expect to see it doing very well.

T-Mobile

BlackBerry Pearl 8110 Review: