Telecom NZ cuts data roaming for Kiwis in Aus, US & UK

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 10 November 2010 12:06

Your IT - Mobility

Telecom New Zealand is offering its mobile customers 100MB of mobile data for $NZ100 while roaming overseas to the US, UK and Australia.

Customers will be charged $NZ8.00/MB for the first 12.5MB and a remaining 87.5MB worth of data for the rest of their billing month will be free. Any usage over the 100MB total will be charged at an overage rate of $NZ8.00 per MB.

The new pricing is available to all XT customers, both prepaid and postpaid and will be applied automatically to their bill without them having to do anything to activate it before they leave New Zealand.

According to Telecom's head of mobile roaming, Niki Chave "This means our customers get the equivalent of $NZ800 (in Australia) and $NZ1000 (in the US and UK) worth of data for only $NZ100. The data pricing covers all types of mobile data usage, on all devices and across all networks in our three most popular roaming destinations, Australia, the US and the UK." She added: "Telecom will look to add additional destinations to the plan at a later date."

Vodafone NZ recently halved its rate for traveller to Australia, to $NZ5.00, but does not offer preferential rates to any other countries.

The rates for New Zealanders travelling to Australia are much better than for Australians in New Zealand. None of the Australian telcos offer any country specific rates, although Optus offers 20 percent discount in countries where a carrier is a member of Bridge Alliance.

Optus' casual rates are $20.48 per MB ($NZ26.73). Telstra charges $15 ($NZ19.58), plus a 15 cent flagfall for each session initiated by the customer (we were unable to find any explanation as to what exactly constitutes a session).

Vodafone Australia charges $10 per MB but also has an offer that seems to be well ahead of anything else available, and which comes close to Telecom NZ's offer. Customers can buy data bundles by the month for $49, $199 or $329 with include data at prices from $1.96 per MB to $1.65 depending on the bundle.

When the cap is reached, rather than charging an excessive rate for above quota data, as is the case on many 'capped' offering, Vodafone actually discounts the casual $10 per MB rate by 20 percent.