Vodafone drops data roaming costs by 'up to 45%' (sort of)

From June 2008, Vodafone’s top whack mobile roaming bundle will go from €75 to €60. And they’ll increase the international roaming allowance from 100mb/month to 150mb/month. Which, if you do a little bit of spin, gets you a 45% reduction in the price per megabyte.

Sounds good. It is good. All moving in the right direction. That European Commissioner is really sorting things out isn’t she?

Here, for the Big Red fans amongst us, is the full release:

Vodafone today announces a price reduction of up to 45% to its monthly data roaming tariff for European business travellers. This price cut strengthens Vodafone’s leading position in the industry following its introduction last summer of a daily pricing plan, costing €12.

From June 2008, the maximum charge for Vodafone’s monthly data roaming bundle will be lowered to €60 per month – a €15 price cut – in a move designed to make it even more affordable for customers to use their laptop computers wirelessly when abroad. At the same time, the company will increase the amount of data a customer can use to at least 150MB in most European markets from 100MB, meaning that the price per megabyte will reduce by around 45%.

Arun Sarin, Chief Executive,, commented: ‘Vodafone led the market with the launch in 2005 of its innovative Passport voice roaming tariff, which is now used by more than 16 million customers, and we were also the first mobile operator to introduce a monthly data roaming tariff in Europe.

‘Today’s announcement builds on those two initiatives by giving corporate customers real choice between straightforward daily or monthly low-cost, data pricing plans to fit their travelling habits. Our focus now is to offer consumers, who are increasingly using their mobile phones to access the Internet whilst in their hotel room, in a café or on the beach, with predictable data roaming tariffs.”

In addition to reducing the cost of its monthly tariff, Vodafone is introducing a variant of its European flat-rate daily tariff to key non-EU destinations. For a flat-rate fee of €30 per 24-hour session for 50 megabyte (MB) of data use, customers can pay per day for using their laptops in key business centres such as the USA, Asia Pacific region and in South Africa.

These changes will be implemented by Vodafone’s operating companies from the end June, this year, and will be tailored to meet the individual needs of customers in specific markets.

Customers will also benefit from Vodafone’s extensive international mobile broadband network, which covers more countries than any other operator. Using the latest 3G broadband (HSDPA) network technology, customers with a Vodafone Mobile Connect USB modem or a Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G broadband data card on either a per day or per month tariff will be able to connect just as they do in their home country and get download speeds of up to 3.6Mbps in selected areas.

It’s a little bit naughty to say ‘consumers, who are increasingly using their mobile phones to access the Internet whilst in their hotel room’ when this tariff is, to my understanding, ONLY available for broadband data cards/modems and NOT handsets.