From June 2008, Vodafone’s top whack mobile roaming bundle will go from €75 to €60. And they’ll increase the international roaming allowance from 100mb/month to 150mb/month. Which, if you do a little bit of spin, gets you a 45% reduction in the price per megabyte.
Sounds good. It is good. All moving in the right direction. That European Commissioner is really sorting things out isn’t she?
Here, for the Big Red fans amongst us, is the full release:
Vodafone today announces a price reduction of up to 45% to its monthly data roaming tariff for European business travellers. This price cut strengthens Vodafone’s leading position in the industry following its introduction last summer of a daily pricing plan, costing €12.
From June 2008, the maximum charge for Vodafone’s monthly data roaming bundle will be lowered to €60 per month – a €15 price cut – in a move designed to make it even more affordable for customers to use their laptop computers wirelessly when abroad. At the same time, the company will increase the amount of data a customer can use to at least 150MB in most European markets from 100MB, meaning that the price per megabyte will reduce by around 45%.
Arun Sarin, Chief Executive,, commented: ‘Vodafone led the market with the launch in 2005 of its innovative Passport voice roaming tariff, which is now used by more than 16 million customers, and we were also the first mobile operator to introduce a monthly data roaming tariff in Europe.
‘Today’s announcement builds on those two initiatives by giving corporate customers real choice between straightforward daily or monthly low-cost, data pricing plans to fit their travelling habits. Our focus now is to offer consumers, who are increasingly using their mobile phones to access the Internet whilst in their hotel room, in a café or on the beach, with predictable data roaming tariffs.â€Â
In addition to reducing the cost of its monthly tariff, Vodafone is introducing a variant of its European flat-rate daily tariff to key non-EU destinations. For a flat-rate fee of €30 per 24-hour session for 50 megabyte (MB) of data use, customers can pay per day for using their laptops in key business centres such as the USA, Asia Pacific region and in South Africa.
These changes will be implemented by Vodafone’s operating companies from the end June, this year, and will be tailored to meet the individual needs of customers in specific markets.
Customers will also benefit from Vodafone’s extensive international mobile broadband network, which covers more countries than any other operator. Using the latest 3G broadband (HSDPA) network technology, customers with a Vodafone Mobile Connect USB modem or a Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G broadband data card on either a per day or per month tariff will be able to connect just as they do in their home country and get download speeds of up to 3.6Mbps in selected areas.
It’s a little bit naughty to say ‘consumers, who are increasingly using their mobile phones to access the Internet whilst in their hotel room’ when this tariff is, to my understanding, ONLY available for broadband data cards/modems and NOT handsets.
And when all’s said and done, it’s still devilishly expensive!
C’mon down Mr Whatley – let’s hear you talk Vodafone out of this embarrasment of a release 😉
Seriously though, this is just offensive. How can they keep a straight face whilst using terms like ‘Flat rate fee’ and then say that it’s only for 50MB. So what they are really saying is that we will charge you €0.60 per MB (and if you use a smidge more no doubt you will be N*A*I*L*E*D for it) just because you are under a different Vodafone network.
Thier in-country users pay £7.50 (or €10) for 120MB, or €0.08 per MB. That’s bad enough. So why is – all of a sudden – the MB downloaded in Germany costing Vodafone PLC nearly eight times as much to deliver as the MB in the UK?
They can’t even claim it’s because of exhorbitant interconnect, backhaul or roaming charges, because it’s_the_same_company, and the traffic goes to the internet direct.
No wonder people still like to use WiFi. Voda rely on company accounts to keep paying these stupid amounts.
This sort of nonsense is going to be a real driver for the likes of the JoikuSpot WiFi app. Soon it’s going to be hard to buy a decent Nokia without WiFi in it. The Joiku app is so simple to download, install & use that visitors to countries can have their local friends download, install it and turn it on in less time than it takes to boot up an XP laptop. I know this because we did it yesterday on an E61i (that happened to be in the meeting with its owner) for a Canadian visitor whos data roaming was playing up. Two minutes thirty seconds from clicking the Browser button to having WiFi love all over the room, at a much, much cheaper rate and better speed than would have been the case.
It will be a double whammy for the likes of VF, as not only will they loose the roaming charge, but also the local MNO (probably *not* a Vodafone PLC affiliate) offering the best deal will see increased uptake of data and use of apps like JoikuSpot to meet local & visitor demands for broadband.
Tell me that won’t be a driver for avoiding these plain silly data fees.
/m
Sir, in the GSM world, it does not matter which device you use: handset, PC card or a 3G dongle; the network does not care – it will happily connect you and (super)charge accordingly, thank you.
At least Voda is proactive in this matter, in order to look a little better than competition. But we seem to still be early adopters, with these data prices. Wifi will have it’s say.
AL