Overseas roaming
charges are no longer as expensive as they
were in the past and the mobile phone is
now a feasible method of keeping in touch
whilst travelling overseas nowadays. In fact,
this summer networks like Vodafone are effectively
offering roaming calls at no extra cost,
due to their summer roaming promotion combined
with the Vodafone Passport. Unfortunately
newer data services like HSDPA mobile internet
access are yet to catch up with the price
decreases for the better established mediums
of calls and text messages.
One of the main problems is that a high number
of countries do not offer 3G roaming. GPRS
is more widely available but is not built to
handle 3G data services. 3G should be available
in most European countries but further afield
isn’t really an option yet. Costs are relatively
high. For example, Vodafone offer 24 hours
worth of internet access in a range of participating
countries (mostly European destinations and
well developed countries such as South Africa
and the USA) for a flat rate of £9.99. This
might seem expensive to some people, but unfortunately
mobile internet abroad is still a bit of a
luxury.
Good news for consumers who are looking to
use data services abroad came last autumn though,
when the European Commission announced that
it would be looking into data rates charged
whilst roaming. Better awareness and caps on
the price per megabyte of data used are to
be introduced on the 1st of July 2009 in an
attempt to make charges fairer. This development
should kick-start the growth of what is still
a developing area of telecommunications.
No doubt availability will increase and prices
come down as the technology becomes better
established. What’s available is undeniably
useful though. Laptops can be taken online
through a mobile phone in the modem mode, which
could be necessary for those needing to work
whilst abroad. The latest handsets, such as
the iPhone
4 on Vodafone, are great if it
is just emails that need to be checked. Some
networks will have a maximum daily charge for
data usage so that can restrict the costs of
data roaming, but it is strongly advised that
all charges are understood before using mobile
internet abroad.
