Vodafone offers free global roaming on premium Red plans
By David Flynn, December 15 2014
Vodafone has dropped the $5/day roaming charge from its most expensive smartphone plans in a move that delivers up to two years of free worldwide voice and data to Australia's most globe-trotting business travellers.
The deal is open to all new customers on Vodafone's Red plans of $100/month or more – along with current customers upgrading from their current plans – for 24 months, provided they sign on the dotted line by March 3rd 2015.
The eligible plans are $100 Red, $100 Red Business, $130 Red Business and $130 Red Business Grow.
(Australian telephone support is also part of the Red recipe, with all support calls answered by a support centre based in Hobart rather than being flung off to India or the Philippines.)
Vodafone's baseline $100 Red plan includes a standard 6GB of data per month plus a bonus 2GB per month.
Customers are nominally restricted to 90 roaming days per year, a Vodafone spokeswoman told Australian Business Traveller.
Vodafone's standard roaming deal lets customers use their plan's data, text and voice allowance for a flat $5 a day across 47 countries worldwide including New Zealand, Asia, the US, UK and Europe.
That includes access to local 3G or 4G networks plus unlimited standard calls back to Australia as well as within the country you're currently in. There's also free text messaging to sweeten the deal.
“We know roaming costs are a top concern for Australian travellers, which is why we’ve negotiated hard to bring our customers Australia’s best deals on roaming" said Stephen Smyth, General Manager of Postpaid at Vodafone.
“With Vodafone’s $5 roaming, there are no zones, no daily data quotas and customers only pay the $5 a day rate when they use their smartphones,” Smyth added.
“International roaming is a great example of why Australia needs a strong, third mobile provider keeping the big two honest."
Saving $5 per day on roaming quickly adds up. The only caveat is that customers who signed up this time last year to take advantage of Vodafone's 'double data' deal will find the extra data isn't carried over to the new plan, so check your data cap and usage patterns before to commit to the switch.
For more details on the free roaming deal, click through to vodafone.com.au.
Earlier this week Telstra launched a series of International Travel Pass deals which offer voice calls, texts and data roaming in more than 40 countries at $5 to $10 per day, although with only 50MB per day on tap.
Review: Telstra International Travel Roaming Pass
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David Flynn is the Editor-in-Chief of Executive Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.
17 Dec 2014
Total posts 5
Vodafone Red Roaming is great, but they need to increase their range of countries covered to include popular destinations that are covered by the new Telstra Roaming plans, such as Malaysia, Philippines and South Africa. Otherwise, they stand to lose the competitive advantage of their Red Roaming plans, which are superior in the countries where they can be used.
20 Jun 2014
Total posts 59
Hmm.. I am on the older Red 100 plan (with $5 roaming) and was told I cannot upgrade to the new Red 100 plan (with free roaming). I guess they don't want to reduce my total bill.
The newer plan comes with less data (6+2GB instead of 5+5GB) but I'd happily take the hit to save on roaming. Also the new plan has 300 international minutes included which is handy when in Oz.
Still it is a sign of how far we have come that $5 roaming can no longer be considered a good deal! Fwiw I've been very happy with the service, I can use my phone in HK just as I'd use it in Australia without turning off background data or anything.
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