The European Commission has acted on the roaming charges charged by the mobile operators for calls when you’re abroad but very little discussion has centred on the data roaming charges which are even more extortionate.

Vodafone has been charging £4.25 (ex. VAT) per MB when roaming abroad on ‘partner’ networks and over £8.00/MB on non-partner networks, although I note that they now suggest all networks are at the lower rate.

Within the UK, the entry level Vodafone Mobile Broadband plan costs £25/month and includes 3GB (i.e. 3000MB) per month of usage (still subject to a fair usage policy). This is about £0.008 per MB), making international access about 500 times more expensive than UK data rates.

Vodafone has indeed appeared to have realised this is unsustainable (at one point I paid £10 to check my e-mail) and they have now launched a £95/month plan which includes 200MB abroad, a mere £0.475 per MB, only 60 times the cost of UK traffic (assuming it was all used abroad).
This is still far too expensive to properly use 3G abroad and sooner or later the mobile network operators will need to realise that this is hindering use whilst travelling, with many opting to use Wi-Fi networks where possible, whereas in the UK I would often use Vodafone’s 3G service instead as it’s low maintenance and less hassle. I also have a pay-as-you-go SIM card in one country I visit regularly, something that a few years ago couldn’t be used for GPRS/3G but now can. Also, the availability of 3G roaming agreements leaves a bit to be desired for.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 6:39 pm and is filed under general.blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.