Vodafone launches global roaming add-ons for Prepaid customers

Since the launch of their $5 a day roaming now three years ago, Vodafone has had the best offer for Aussie consumers when it comes to roaming with your phone overseas.  Today they’ve announced some add-on packs for Prepaid customers to win them over in the same space.

$5 a day to roam overseas and use your phone just like when you’re at home is great value and an absolute game changer – still today three years after it launched there’s nothing close to it on the market in terms of overall value.

But for Prepaid mobile users there’s been no love, until now. Today Vodafone announced some add-on packages for Prepaid users allowing them to buy blocks of data or calls and data for when they travel.

Vodafone Chief Marketing Officer Loo Fun Chee said today “International roaming has been expensive for prepaid consumers, but we have been negotiating hard with telcos around the world to deliver more competitive rates for calls, TXT and data in popular international travel destinations, and I am excited to say that today we launch what we believe is our best ever prepaid roaming offer,”

“From the outset, we wanted to build a product that catered to the needs of travellers.  From talking to our customers we understood they wanted a solution that could work for long weekend or week-long getaways and this led to our decision to offer them the choice of a 3-day or 7-day expiry which can be added multiple times as needed,”

“We also recognised that the last thing travellers want to do after a long flight is call their telco to buy a roaming product. With this in mind, we designed Prepaid Roaming Add-ons so customers can activate their roaming service before they leave Australia and buy the pack when they arrive, all via the MyVodafone app or TXT, without needing to call us,”

These add-ons are similar to the way Telstra operates for roaming customers both prepaid or postpaid, and allow users who aren’t on contracts or without any payment arrangements in place to pre-purchase their travel needs.

There are four packs on offer, two for periods of days, and two for weekly access.

The three-day packs are $25 each, and you choose between calls and data, or just data.

With the all services pack, you get 100MB of data, 30 mins of calls and 30 SMS.

If you choose data only, you get no calls or text allowance, but 200MB of data.

For a weekly pack you’ll pay $35, for all services that gets you 250MB of data and 60 mins of calls plus 60 texts, or for data only you’ll get 500MB.

This compares favourably to Telstra who offer 30 day packs at different price ranges for data only.

For $29 you get 100MB to use over 30 days, for $85 you get 300MB and for $160 you get 600MB.

Optus offer only a Pay as you go plan, for 50c per MB, $1 per minute calls and 50c SMS messages.

No matter which way you go, you’ve got to be very careful with your usage.  100, 200 and even 500MB is not a lot, you could easily burn through that if you’re not careful.

But – the opportunity now exists to roam with a prepaid account, just being available is what some people need.

Data Saving Travel Tips:

If you are planing to travel and use a roaming plan, then you should look at ways to minimise your data usage – often when you just turn your phone on it will download lots of app data!

• Turn off Mobile Data in the settings until you really need it
• Turn off App Auto Updates so there aren’t heaps of background downloads that could wait until you get home
• Turn off “push” email – set your email app to only check for new mail when you open the app
• Turn off Attachment downloads – so your email program only downloads the text of an email by default
• Turn off Video on social networking apps – like Twitter and Facebook, turn off the auto-play videos which will chew through data before you know it.
• Turn off “push” or “background” updates on social networking apps also – so they only use data when you open the apps
• And, whenever possible, use WiFi when you travel:)