Recently Vodafone announced it was dropping its roaming charges across Europe from June for all its “Passport” members, a service free for its customers to join. That means it will cost the same to make a call, text or send picture messages whether in mainland Europe or back home in Blighty.
It’s an initial three month trial to encourage usage during the summer holiday months. But let’s be fair, based on recent reports, that holiday is more likely to be Margate than Malaga. Even so, the move has to be applauded.
Operators including Vodafone have long claimed that prices will reduce through competition, not regulation, so it’s good to see Vodafone putting its money where its mouth is. It also co-incides with the company cutting the costs of international calls from mobiles within the UK with some destinations down to 5p/minute.
For now data charges will still be subject to roaming charges but it may be just a matter of time before they follow suit. In any event, from July 1st, roaming charges set by the European Parliament go into effect so the most you’ll fork out for mobile surfing in Europe will be €1 per MB, that’s roughly 90p per meg, down from £1.50.
If the move proves successful, Vodafone will consider extending its offer or introducing similar schemes to its UK customers. The initiative will also pressurise other mobile operators to slash or abolish roaming charges.
As a multilingual UK call centre it will be interesting to see what impact this unexpected gift for international callers has. We’ll keep you posted….
Wherever you’re going on holiday this summer, enjoy it. Only this time, you no longer have an excuse for not calling home.
sounds good if vodfaone retain it after the summer and/or others follow suit.
if it’s just a summer promotion then it probably does not merit the press coverage it’s had
time will tell – keep us updated!
By: philofish on June 12, 2009
at 8:33 am