Vodafone is introducing a flat rate data tariff for roamers. The plan will allow customers roaming on to Vodafone-owned networks within Europe to pay E12 for a 50MB bundle of data on a daily basis.
As with Vodafone’s existing Passport voice roaming tariff (which now has over 12m customers), the service is available on an opt-in basis but carries no activation charge. The tariff will be available to Vodafone customers with mobile-enabled laptops from 1 July 2007.
Vodafone reckons this will “significantly” lower the cost of data roaming “for business customers and consumers alike” and characterises the move as the latest development in a drive to simplify roaming prices, making them more predictable and understandable for customers.
Jeremy Green, Principal Analyst at Ovum, was less than impressed: “The tariff is available to laptop card users, and apparently not to other data users. As with Passport, it’s down to the user to work out when a Euro12 outlay is cheaper than just paying on a per-MB basis. Vodafone’s suggestion that 50MB per day constitutes ‘practically unlimited data usage’ seems a little out of touch with reality – a short while browsing BBC web sites can easily rack up 10MB, for example. That’s not core business usage, but it’s not unfair use either.
“So this isn’t really a flat rate, and it isn’t really unlimited either."
Vodafone also announced that from 1 July it will use new lower wholesale rates for data roaming in into reciprocal wholesale arrangements “with any other European operator". For small sessions of up to a maximum of 200Kb of data, the charge will be a maximum of €0.50; for sessions above 200Kb, the rate will be €0.50 per megabyte.
This may turn out to be more important in the long term, “a small practical step towards ending the roaming logjam” as Jeremy Green put it.
Vodafone reckons this will “significantly” lower the cost of data roaming “for business customers and consumers alike” and characterises the move as the latest development in a drive to simplify roaming prices, making them more predictable and understandable for customers.
Jeremy Green, Principal Analyst at Ovum, was less than impressed: “The tariff is available to laptop card users, and apparently not to other data users. As with Passport, it’s down to the user to work out when a Euro12 outlay is cheaper than just paying on a per-MB basis. Vodafone’s suggestion that 50MB per day constitutes ‘practically unlimited data usage’ seems a little out of touch with reality – a short while browsing BBC web sites can easily rack up 10MB, for example. That’s not core business usage, but it’s not unfair use either.
“So this isn’t really a flat rate, and it isn’t really unlimited either."
Vodafone also announced that from 1 July it will use new lower wholesale rates for data roaming in into reciprocal wholesale arrangements “with any other European operator". For small sessions of up to a maximum of 200Kb of data, the charge will be a maximum of €0.50; for sessions above 200Kb, the rate will be €0.50 per megabyte.
This may turn out to be more important in the long term, “a small practical step towards ending the roaming logjam” as Jeremy Green put it.