Vodafone Brings 4G Roaming To 18 Countries

Vodafone customers will be able to roam on 4G networks in 18 countries while paying no more than it costs for one of the operator’s existing 3G packages, which allow customers to use their home allowances almost anywhere for €3 a day.

4G roaming is already available in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain. By summer it will be extended to the Vodafone-owned networks in  Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK, and those operated by its partners in Austria, Belgium, France, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland.

4G roaming

However it appears as though there is no partner in place for the US, with Vodafone in the process of selling its 45 percent stake in the American joint-venture Verizon Wireless for $130 billion (£78.3bn).

Vodafone, which currently has 500,000 UK 4G subscribers, says the rollout of LTE roaming has been fast tracked as part of its £19 billion investment programme across its worldwide network over the next two years, and will make using mobile data abroad more affordable and faster than many hotel Wi-Fi networks.

“4G is great for travellers, whether they are on business or on holiday,” says Vodafone Group chief commercial and operations officer Paolo Bertoluzzo. “Much faster, simpler to use and often less expensive than typical, hotel Wi-Fi connections anywhere in Europe, 4G roaming will give our customers high-speed connections for video, music streaming, web surfing, working and much more anywhere, from the airport to the café.”

Economic madness

However Vodafone has not gone as far as the European Union would like. The EU considers the existence of roaming charges within member states as “economic madness” and wants to eliminate them entirely.

European Commission claims that nearly half of Europeans don’t use their phone abroad because of the prohibitive cost and argues that operators are missing out huge potential revenues from 300 million mobile phone users, while another report suggests that 4G roaming will be worth £26 billion to networks by 2018.

The EU has been successful in introducing some price caps which have lowered the cost of calling, texting and using data within member states, while Three has abolished some charges in a number of countries, allowing customers to use their phone as though they were at home. The price caps only cover Europe however, and O2 chose to respond to the regulations by increasing its charges for roaming outside the EU.

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