Vodafone launches cut-rate data roaming deal

Road warriors have done pretty well out of Australia’s mobile broadband price war. But once you take to the air and travel beyond our land that’s girt by sea, things change for the worse. Jetsetters have long been confronted with roaming data rates typically stretching from $10 to $20 per megabyte.

Read that last bit again, and slowly. It’s not a typo. Between $10 and $20 for every measly megabyte, depending on your home carrier and the country you’re visiting. (The sole exception is a handful of 3 networks where local mobile subscribers can enjoy rates of 50c/MB). Add up a week’s worth of Internet access on the go and your roaming bill looks more like a ransom demand.

Now it’s the globetrotter’s turn to get a break, as Vodafone this week announced slashed its international data roaming charges by introducing two fixed-price packages valid in 39 countries including the US, a fair slab of Europe and much of Asia. The ‘Light’ plan provides 25MB for $49 per month, while the ‘Heavy’ plan allows for 120MB at $199. You won’t want to get into serious downloading but there’s ample overhead for emails and simple attachments along with the most common activity of all, which is browsing the web.

There’s a little fine print that frequent flyers should read before they sign on the dotted line. Both of the data roaming plans are available only as add-ons to Vodafone’s current 5GB/$39 deal, although that plan also happens to be Australia’s best value mobile broadband deal (and it includes your choice of a USB or ExpressCard 3G HSDPA modem).

However, while the 5GB/$39 package comes with a 24 month contract the international plans are contract-free – they can be bought as and when you need them. There’s no plan period shorter than one month, but we think that even on a one-week jaunt you could find a way to gobble up 25MB or 120MB of data. On the other hand, there’s no mechanism for an on-the-fly ‘top up’ where you can buy an additional slab of data for the same price. Once you exceed your limit there’s an excess charge of 0.8c/KB, or a meaty $8/MB – which is close to standard global roaming prices.

Another sting in the tail is that you must manually select the correct network in each country. Unlike most global roaming arrangements where you can just let your mobile/broadband card automatically select whatever network has the best reception in the country you are in, Vodafone has only negotiated these cheap rates with specific networks in each country. Roam off those networks, and your bill will be racking up global roaming charges at a rate of knots.

The connection speeds vary between countries of course, depending on the local network. 19 of Vodafone’s partner countries offer some flavour of HSDPA, four are restricted to 3G and 16 still meander along at GPRS speeds. You can find the full list of countries, as well as further details, on Vodafone’s web site.