Data-hungry Vodafone roaming customers are in for a shock, with prices set to soar for anyone accessing the internet from their phone while abroad.
Vodafone says its new data packages, which come into effect on 15 June, should lower costs for “the vast majority” of travellers surfing abroad. While this may be true for light users, anyone using 25MB of data a day faces a five-fold increase in their roaming bills.
Under the new tariff, surfers using their handsets in Europe will be charged £1 per MB for up to 5MB per day, then £5 for each further 5MB.
“We used to charge £4.99 for 25MB of data but, the vast majority of our users use less than 5MB, so they were paying nearly £5 for not much data,” a Vodafone spokesperson told PC Pro. “Now they can start accessing the web from £1.”
Outside Europe, handset data charges will be moved to £3 for the first 5MB, with additional blocks of 5MB priced at £15.
Prices for accessing the network via a laptop remain the same – £10 per day for up to 50MB in Europe, with visitors to the rest of the world paying £30 a day for 50MB.
Vodafone declined to comment on why there was such a disparity between mobile phone and laptop tariffs, except to say that mobile handsets accessed pages that were mobile friendly, while travellers connecting from a laptop “have different usage patterns that require a different pricing model”.
Vodafone also says it’s introducing notifications to alert consumers when they are approaching a tariff threshold.
Last week Vodafone seemingly [a href=”/news/357823/update-vodafone-comes-clean-on-ipad-pricing
” TARGET=”_blank” TITLE=”Vodafone comes clean” FOLLOW=”?”]changed the pricing for its iPad packages[/a] in response to stiff competition from rival carriers.
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