So Vodafone has announced that it is abolishing (for the most part) mobile roaming rates for a grand total of three months this summer. Over 35 European countries (some reports say as many as 43) will be part of the new roaming system, which allows Vodafone customers to call and text at the exact same rate as they pay at home. Data rates are not included though, so be careful about your mobile Internet usage. The only requirement is that you have to sign on to Vodafone’s Passport scheme… which is free, so that’s all right.
What’s this Passport scheme then?
Passport would appear to be Vodafones method of keeping in line with the new EU regs that force them to bring the cost of mobile roaming down. Under the Passport scheme, all calls and texts made while abroad are at local rates – but you have to pay a connection fee first. Check out the price list:
From the release:
“These are two great value offers for our customers this summer. With our Vodafone Passport promotion you can sit on the beach with your phone switched on knowing you can take and make a call just as you would if you were in your back garden,” says Ian Shepherd consumer director for Vodafone UK. “Vodafone International is good news for the millions of UK pay as you go customers as they can now make calls to family and friends around the world from just 5p.”
What we think?
Huh… who’d have known they had it in them? After the way they’ve been fighting it, I had been expecting operators to make grudging concessions to the new EU mandated roaming schemes. But here’s Vodafone, jumping in at the deep end with a pretty good offer. Even after the three month honey-moon period is over, the Passport scheme isn’t all that bad. A 65c connection fee can really add up if you make lots of short phonecalls – but if you’re calling home for a good long chat, then it’s well worth it.
hmmmm.. is this that good? 3 already offers same or no cost roaming rates to all 3 to 3 users. So if I make calls in Ireland its the same cost as in the UK
Since the legislation came into force about a month ago, many UK mobile companies have made a song and dance about their new and cheaper roaming calls and sms prices (declaring them as if they decided to give their customers gift of cheap summer hoilday roaming calls) but……
… the significant reduction in data roaming costs has yet to be passed on to consumers.
If I’m using roaming data in France, O2 pays the French mobile company a max of €1 for every megabyte I use – this French company is providing all of the mobile infrastructure for me to do this – O2 still charges me £2.99 (€4) per megabyte, yet all they are providing is a billing process!(not the cell base stations or mobile 3G infrastructure)
You can now buy a £50 “bolt on” which gives you 50MB (ie £1 per megabyte) but its a fixed price so is clearly only this cheap if you use exactly 50MB – and you can’t buy more than one in month, so a high user is back up to the £2.99 per month for all data over 50MB.
O2 is by no means alone – in fact they are often the most forward thinking re roaming data – the industry continues to stunt it’s own potentially explosive growth.
Essentially they are still trying to get away with mugging roaming data users – the first company to see they can corner the market here will make a killing – but the fact that none has yet is very suspicious
our website http://www.sno.mobi is the worlds first complete ski resort guide designed from the start for mobile – as you imagine, when a Brit is skiing, they are probably in another country… roaming!
We have designed the site with tiny data size so our users can’t get a bill shock, but really it should be virtually free to surf a site with approx 20kb per page – in ANY country!
The EU rulings are certainly in the right direction (the phone companies proved they were not going to trade ethically on roaming data without outside legislation) but it neither goes far enough, nor is being implemented quickly enough.
The industry could easily have coped with the €0.5 euro per MB cap from the beginning and this rulin only serves to prolong the period in which operators can over charge their customers.