Vodafone cuts global roaming rates

More than 1.8 million Vodafone Ireland subscribers will begin using a range of simplified mobile roaming rates when they travel abroad from May 25th.

The rates can offer big savings to the firm's customers but will also heavily penalise people who do change their settings to roam on Vodafone's overseas partners.

For example, Vodafone customers who do not roam on its partner network in Britain (Vodafone UK), will be charged at €1.59 per minute instead of 59 cents.

The new rates reflect Vodafone's first major attempt to use its global scale and reach to offer its subscribers a better service than its rivals, although it is still cheaper for non-Vodafone customers to roam in some regions.

For example, Vodafone Ireland customers will pay 59 cents per minute to receive a call when travelling in Britain, whereas Meteor customers pay just 45 cents per minute to receive a call.

But Vodafone's fees are significantly cheaper than similar flat-rate tariffs introduced by O2 for its pre-paid customers, with differences of 40 cents per minute.

The company said yesterday it would abolish peak and non-peak rates in favour of the single tariff structure day or night, weekday or weekend. Vodafone will also offer flat-rate fees across Britain; the Americas; Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Australia; and two different regions within Europe, instead of charging separate prices in different states.

The tariffs are also available to both pre-paid and monthly contract customers, whereas O2 and Meteor have separate tariff plans for the two subscriber groups.

Vodafone said yesterday its single-rate roaming tariffs would offer cuts of 10- 40 per cent in the key holiday markets for its Irish customers. The new rates span 39 countries covering most key European countries, USA, Australia, Japan, China and Singapore.

All Vodafone customers will automatically receive an SMS to inform them of the local Vodafone or partner network on arrival at their destination.

Once this network has been manually selected, customers will automatically be charged the new rates.