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In a move clearly designed to boost the number of users of its new 027 digital cellphone service, Telecom rushed headlong into a marketing campaign that had at its core, the offer of unlimited txting for just $10 per month.

That Vodafone didn't try to counter this offer was a clear indication that flat-rate texting was not really a viable economic model and that, sooner or later, Telecom would unilaterally revoke the plan -- leaving lots of these new customers really ticked off.

Well as they say, all good things must come to an end and that's exactly what's happened with Telecom's "all you can eat" TXT offer.

Now, instead of being able to txt their fingers off for just $10 a month, all those 027 customers now face the prospect of being limited to an average of just 16 messages per day for their $10.

While most of us oldies send far fewer than 16 SMS messages per day, the very market sector that was the target of the original Telecom promotion often send many times that number -- and they're furious.

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So furious in fact that they've set up an online petition which has, within a few short days, already racked up well over 11,000 signatures.

That's 11,000 of Telecom's newly acquired customers who are spitting tacks because they feel they've been duped.

And meanwhile, Vodafone is probably smiling very contentedly, having collected $0.20 per txt from its customers and (I would expect) a small but useful sum for delivering txts that all those 027 users have been sending its 021 users. And don't underestimate just how much that sum might have been. I know of many young 027 users who regularly broadcast jokes and other trivia to lists of over 100 other mobile phone users, including plenty who have stuck with 021.

What's more, my daughter's Vodafone mobile got txt-bombed the other day by some idiot taking advantage of Telecom's flat-rate plan. A total of over 300 txt identical messages arrived and were duly deleted -- at what cost to Telecom I wonder? She tells me that this is now a quite common way to piss people off -- since it costs nothing and clogs up the recipient's SMS mailbox for hours or even days on end.

But hang on -- surely it's better to pay just two cents per message for your first 500 txts a month than to cough up the $0.20 that Vodafone charges -- right?

You bet it is. Yes, even after the abolition of the true flat-rate plan, Telecom's offer remains far more attractive to power-txters. However, they're still pee'd off because many were so naive as to expect that it was a permanent offer.

And what's worse -- Telecom has now hinted that even the $10 per month for up to 500 SMS messages has only a limited time left to run. TV commercials that have just started screening advise that the offer is good only until the end of the year -- another seven short months.

What will happen next is anyone's guess, but I suspect that unless Telecom continue to offer a significantly lower price, many of its newfound customers will jump ship to Vodafone out of anger when they next upgrade their phone.

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