Travel in Europe, pay UK rates – for £3 per day
With the EC's Digital Agenda proposing that by 2015 operators should offer roaming services within the EU at no premium to home market rates, operators are being forced to reimagine their roaming offerings.
Vodafone UK has been ahead of the game for a while, for instance with its DataTraveller product, and now it has taken a further step by offering customers access to their home tariff plans whilst they are travelling in Vodafone's dedicated Eurozone countries.
For £3 a day, Vodafone UK customers travelling in Europe will be able to make calls, send texts and use the mobile internet from within their UK tariff plans. Of course, this isn't quite the "no premium" of the Digital Agenda – but it limits the additional downside for users to £3 per day, given they stay within their existing plans and limits.
Vodafone said three 10 minutes calls and 10 text messages back to the UK, plus the use of 5MB of mobile internet would have cost users over £17.00 on previous standard roaming prices (although it would have been less if the user was a Passport of DataTraveller user.)
It seems a sensible approach, and one that could offer users peace of mind. The service is opt-in only, and is onljy triggered once a user starts using their phone. Incoming calls and texts are free.
More on Vodafone EuroTraveller here.