TAG | Vodafone nicely slices international roaming prices – cool! |
|
| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Monday, 28 July 2008 | |
|
Page 3 of 3 Well, it’s nearly Olympics time, and I guess it’s no surprise to see Vodafone taking advantage of the hoopla to offer a “special deal” that it clearly hopes will entice more people to switch to its network. That’s competition, after all. It says this means that “customers making calls from China will receive a 50 per cent reduction on the roaming zone charge, making it more affordable than ever to share the success of Australia’s Olympians with friends and family back home”, with China being in Zone 3. That means the “standard Zone 3 roaming charge is reduced from $2.00 to $1.00 for the month of August”. It’s worth remembering once more than this isn’t just for business customers – but for consumers, too. It really seems to me to be throwing down the gauntlet for international roaming – Optus and Telstra, are you listening? 3 Mobile has its own 3 Like Home as I mentioned before, so if you’re a 3 customer you’re likely already enjoying cheaper prices depending on where you travel, but it is nice to see Vodafone has a global plan in place with fixed rates. Vodafone is also spruiking it’s international “roaming data bundles”, which it already previously announced. These give you 25MB for $49 per month, or 120MB for $199 per month, classed as a light and heavy plan, respectively. Sadly these cap amounts are far too small to allow standard use of your computer – you’d definitely want to access your mail via a web mail account rather than through standard Outlook, and you’d want to ensure your computer is not download large Windows updates, or you could bust through your cap very quickly. But at least Vodafone are offering fixed data caps at all, again showing up the competition. I just hope Vodafone looks towards doubling the amount of data offered – at the very least – to further reduce the chance of bill shock. Intrestingly, Vodafone says these international data roaming plans can also be taken up for “just one month” without any additional fixed-term contracts, letting consumers “activate a new plan each time they travel”, which is a simple and fair way of doing things. To conclude, it’s always a massive, massive surprise when a telecommunications company voluntarily decides to offer its customers a better, fairer, cheaper deal, while giving them more options. Clearly, given the tremendous price competitiveness of VoIP services, Vodafone and other phone companies could dramtically drop prices even futher to make global roaming even more affordable for everyone that travels. However given that outcome will still take some time to emerge, I'm nevertheless glad to see Vodafone is keeping its competitive spirit alive and giving its peers a run for their money – just as Optus is doing for consumers with its own “yes” timeless plans, something Vodafone is yet to respond to. That said, cheaper international voice roaming plans are definitely a step in the right direction, with even more steps, from Vodafone and the other telcos - yet to come.
|
Tags
| < Next story in category | Previous story in the category > |
|---|
