New Overseas Tariff Plan from Vodafone
Vodafone, which is the only UK based mobile broadband operator to offer services even when you are travelling abroad, has revised its overseas tariff plans. From the 1st of July, the new tariff plan will come into effect, which will take, where you travel, how much you download, and whether you use a 3G-enabled handset or a dongle to access the net, into consideration.
The ‘where you travel’ part is the most significant change, since Vodafone has defined three zones, each having a different tariff. Zone1 is ‘Europe’, zone 2 is ‘world’, and zone3 is unnamed, covering areas like South America, and parts of Asia and Africa.
If you are using a dongle, then zone1, zone2 and zone3 will cost you £9.99 per 50MB, £29.99 per 50MB and £4.99 for an MB respectively. The pricing works according to UK day cycle (midnight to midnight), which means that the minimum daily charge for zone 1 is £9.99.
A day before Vodafone revealed its new tariff, Broadband Genie had got a confirmation from the company that it would be doing away with the £60 per month ‘Euro Travel’ and £95 per month ‘Travel’ tariff plans, and introducing new ones in their place.
The new tariff plans, as can be clearly seen, are not suitable for huge downloads, for example, of movies and music. Vodafone has also clarified that, unless you are prepared to run up a high bill, you must abstain from heavy usage. Instead, this plan should be used to browse and check emails, which do not consume your data allowance as much. Another suggested option to avoid unexpected bills is vodafone pay as you go mobile broadband.
To help the customers, when they reach the 50MB mark, Vodafone will notify them of the same so they can choose whether to curtail their browsing or not. This should be a very useful option to ensure that people do not exceed their data allowance, nor run up a mind-boggling mobile broadband bill when abroad, which is often the case currently.
