International phone roaming is a pain. Seriously, I cannot think one thing I hate dealing with is the costs of being connected when on the road aboard.
Whilst within the European Union, there are cost controls that force down the price of roaming (in terms of voice, messages and data).
Thankfully, various UK phone companies are picking up the baton to reduce roaming rates. Three UK have been pushing their Feel Like Home product which has zero roaming costs in certain countries.
Vodafone UK for some time has had its EuroTraveller product, which for £3 a day (£2 a day until 31st August), allows you to use your mobile phone allowances without further penalty within most European Countries.
Well, it seems that Vodafone is increasing its roaming coverage with a new product for Pay Monthly customers – Vodafone World Traveller which works on the same lines, allowing you to use your UK allowances in certain countries for a flat fee of £5 a day, based from midnight to midnight based on the time zone of the capital of the country you’re in.
The list of countries World Traveller supports is different to what Three offers, but covers nine countries (with the capital listed where the daily time zone ticks over):
- Australia (Canberra)
- Brazil (Brasília) – available until 31 October 2014
- Egypt (Cairo)
- Ghana (Accra)
- India (New Delhi)
- New Zealand (Wellington)
- Qatar (Doha)
- South Africa (Pretoria)
- USA (Washington, D.C.)
Considering the call costs in some of these countries can be considerable (£1.35 a minute to make a call, £1 to receive a call, text messages 35p each, Multimedia messages 37p each and data at £3 a MEGABYTE to 5MB, then £15 per extra 5Mb).
Calls/Data transferred outside Vodafone World Traveller countries attract their normal charges
Considering some of the amounts of mail that you could download when getting off a flight, or trying to get information without paying for WiFi, these do represent good value for money for those who need to stay connected with their device abroad.
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