Vodafone to let you roam in Europe at UK prices
Plus, of course, a small daily consideration
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
New European Commission-imposed EU mobile data roaming price regulations kick in on Sunday, and Vodafone has announced a modification of its European roaming package.
The new arrangement, Vodafone Euro Traveller, allows Brits to pay no more for calls, messages and data when they're on the continent as they do at home, Extras excluded - provided they cough up a further £3 a day.
It's an opt-in package: users have to calling 5555 or text ADD to 40506, or they'll miss out. It's only available to pay monthly customers; PAYG-ers don't get a look-in.
Once you're in, you're in. On subsequent days, using your phone in Europe will automatically trigger the addition of £3 to your monthly bill. Opting in automatically opts you out of exsiting roaming deals.
You also opt out of the €50 monthly internet cap.
PAYG punters currently pay £2 a day for 25MB of data when travelling in Europe, which is what pay-monthly customers will pay if they don't opt in to Euro Traveller or one of Vodafone's other roaming packages. Full details at Vodafone's website. ®
COMMENTS
Sigh.
Call me back when I don't have to work magic to just have it cost the same (or SLIGHTLY) more than the UK for everything (whether PAYG or not). Hell, T-Mobile are spread throughout Europe already, so there's no excuse - they don't necessarily have to co-operate with any rivals at all.
And don't mention MB. The second you mention MB at all, I'm put off. Start talking GB's and we can negotiate.
Until then, stop pretending you're doing something helpful. You're not. This is like cutting a penny off petrol by using a different petrol station, where I would save 60p a week, which is barely worth the hassle of worrying about.
Gigabytes, people, and out of my expressible-in-gigabytes-without-having-to-use-floating-point monthly allowance that I would be able to use in the UK too, and with no special arrangements, text-activation or warnings needed beyond what I'd receive in the UK. It's not like you have to send the damn 3G packets all the way back to Blighty by radio in order to let me see Google on my phone while I'm in France.
Re: Missing the point?
"European networks are not the owned by the same country, even when they might appear to be to the common man. If you are on O2 here there is no reason at all for you to get lower price access to a Telephonica network in Spain."
Why not? Even the bloody banks manage to offer foreign ATM services at not wholly unreasonable prices, so most of us don't believe the telcos are doing us a big favour with their outrageous rip off pricing for romaing use, in particular when they are owned by the same company, or have reciprocal roaming agreements. You say the new offers are "optional", but there isn't an easy, reasonably priced alternative. I'm not suggesting they shouldn't make a tidy return on the charges, but that's not what we're talking about.
Indeed, if your argument held water, then Orange ought to charge T Mobile users in the UK the same as foreign roaming users, despite the "shared" network. Funnily enough, they don't. Got an explanation?
Not just about "using" your phone. Unless you remember to switch off all data actions (including the "silent" stuff) then that'll undoubtedly count as "usage" and you'll be copping £3 a day for just having your phone switched on.
Almost the whole mobile industry are thieves. It's taken EU intervention to get this far, and they're still ripping us off. There's no way it actually incurs anything like £3 per day (including a fair margin) for roaming use.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
What you need to know about cloud backup
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything
Data control in the cloud
