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Vodafone adds Caribbean 4G roaming for summer holidays
Vodafone extends its 4G services to a number of destinations – including Caribbean holiday hotspots – for UK customers travelling abroad
Mobile network operator Vodafone has added a number of destinations to its WorldTraveller programme in time for the summer holidays.
The network operator added 22 more countries to the eight already covered in the scheme, launched in July 2014.
Among the countries the WorldTraveller plan now covers are a number of popular Caribbean destinations, including Anguilla, Aruba, Barbados, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Caymans, Curacao, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The service will be available in several Central and South American countries, including El Salvador, Guyana, Panama and Suriname.
WorldTraveller – which costs £5 a day on pay monthly and a selected number of business plans – was already available in Australia, Egypt, Ghana, India, New Zealand, Qatar, South Africa and the US.
WorldTraveller now covers 22 countries around the world, and its EuroTraveller programme – which costs £3 per day and has so far been used by over 2.5 million customers – covers most European countries; and French territories in the West Indies.
Vodafone 4G roaming is available in several other tourist destinations, including Canada, Israel and Thailand.
Vodafone added that, for customers choosing not to opt into the European or worldwide roaming programmes, it will now cap data spending at £36.40 per month, from 1 July 2015.
EU roaming charges sting UK travellers
A recent survey conducted for comparison website uSwitch.com warned that one in six British travellers had been forced to pay bills of over £100 after returning from holidays in the European Union (EU), amounting to an annual total of £573m.
The survey suggested the European Commission (EC) had done too little to inform consumers of its U-turn on its decision to scrap mobile roaming charges altogether in the 27 member states, which was supposed to happen later this year but is now on hold indefinitely.
USwitch telecoms expert Ernest Doku commented: “Measures in place to financially protect UK mobile users abroad aren’t robust enough, and are too easily rendered ineffective.
“The networks’ cap of around €50 is clearly insufficient in that it only covers mobile data, and doesn’t extend to calls, texts and voicemail costs - and 13% even end up opting out of their network’s roaming caps, often because the cap is too restrictive.”
Worryingly, the survey also found that a good number of Brits had been using their mobiles thinking they were in the EU when they were not; close to 50% of British holidaymakers thought Turkey was an EU member state, and that 10% thought African nations Morocco and Tunisia were in Europe.
Read more about roaming
- The EU council of member states has reversed a previous decision to end European mobile roaming charges in 2015.
- MVNO 24 Seven trials a national roaming SIM in bid to pick up rural business customers.
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