Scargill

The Times and other newspapers, eager to report Vodafone’s current elimination of overseas roaming charges for mobile phone calls and text messages – seems to have missed the plot a little here. Yes, you can now phone for normal UK charges overseas (conditions apply), hurray… though I could not get my head around whether that came in under “inclusive minutes” or not – and IF NOT then that is still REALLY a roaming charge… but what the papers DIDN’T report is that the excessive DATA charges for overseas use are NOT being reduced.

Vodafone along with others have been merrily pushing 3G dongles for data transfer, with “unlimited access” which really means a 3gigabytes or thereabouts monthly limit – which for many uses is adequate – most modern phones will allow data use or at least allow your laptop to use the data.  It has been the case now for some time that overseas use of Vodafone data incurs a £9.99 additional daily charge for a mere 50 Meg of overseas use + £9.99 for each additional 50 Meg thereafter (indeed until recently I was paying this for a daily overseas cap of 3Gig – but that has now disappeared). This is NOT being reduced – indeed in some cases depending on the country such charges can be as high as £4.99 for each megabyte!!! 

Worse, Orange when last asked had NO intention of even matching the ridiculously high Vodafone charges. A single video or fancy Powerpoint transfer could easily eat up more than 50 meg.

A short number of years ago it was a novelty to see a laptop on a train, today they are commonplace and mobile phones with data access are MUCH more common. Millions of us make daily use of Facebook, Twitter, BBC news and a million other data services – BEWARE that these charges are NOT going away and excessive overseas use of data will empty your wallet! Until we get some real competition in this area, they can charge what they like.