Vodafone launches roaming offer ahead of EU cap

UK carrier Vodafone has launched a new roaming package for subscribers, ahead of the EU’s new legislation aimed at lowering roaming costs, which comes into force July 1.

Vodafone’s UK pay-monthly customers, including business travellers on standard price plans, are now able to use their existing UK price plan for voice, text and mobile internet in Europe for £3 per day, under the new Vodafone EuroTraveller scheme. Subscribers to the scheme will receive calls and texts for free while travelling across Europe.

“For example, a Pay monthly customer using Vodafone EuroTraveller to make three 10 minutes calls and send ten text messages back to the UK and using 5MB of mobile internet whilst surfing will pay £3 plus their UK home price plan instead of over £17.00 on our previous standard roaming prices,” the operator explained in a statement.

Vodafone added that pay-monthly users who decide they do not wish to opt in to Vodafone EuroTraveller will still benefit from new reduced prices while travelling in Europe from July 1. Making a call back to the UK from 35 European destinations will now cost 28.8p per minute while a text will cost 8.9p and mobile internet will be priced at 69.6p per MB.

The European Union approved legislation in May, ruling that as of 1 July 2012, 1MB data usage will cost no more than 70 Cents, calls will cost a maximum of 29 cents per minute to make and 8 cents per minute to receive, while SMS messages will cost 9 cents each to send. Prices will fall again in 2013 and 2014.

Other operators have also attempted to anticipate the EU’s legislation by launching roaming services before the new regulation comes into effect. Telenor recently launched three slightly different roaming offers under the same Telenor TravelSure concept for Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Telefónica also announced a pan-European data roaming tariff last month, which it claims is “up to ten times cheaper” than the new price caps approved by the European Parliament.