Foreign Calls

Using a mobile in a foreign country can be a bit of a necessary evil for holiday makers. Businessmen are perhaps an exception, as many of them can be spotted at some of the most beautiful world heritage sites with what appears to be a surgically implanted black rectangle hugging an ear; indeed, a place like Karnak Temple in Luxor, Egypt, would feel somewhat naked and unusual today without the leading men of the free world clinching deals under the ancient columns.

But for those people on vacation who don′t work in Bank and its environs, a mobile phone fast becomes a gaping plug hole sucking cash out of the holiday fund. A Pay As You Go customer for most major British networks would expect to pay something in the region of £1/min when making a call anywhere in Europe other than the UK, and this shoots up to a worrying £1.50/min if they are travelling anywhere else in the world. Text messages vary slightly more, with some networks charging 30p or 50p (Europe and rest of world respectively), but others taking money off the customer when they receive texts. It would cost Pay Monthly customers 70p/min to call within Europe, with a smaller 37.2p/min charge to call back to the UK, but they can be charged anything between 85p/min and £1.75/min elsewhere in the world, depending on location and network disparities.

Thankfully for anyone going on holiday this summer, however, this extra tariff, known as a ‘roaming charge′, appears to be on its way out. Vodafone are giving their customers the opportunity to sign up to a scheme whereby the charge for using your phone abroad will be no greater than back at home, which means that people don′t have to worry about getting lost in crowded places and not having enough credit to call their companions, they can check their answer phone messages without spending £2/min, and they can call the bank when their accounts are frozen because they forgot to tell them that they would be on holiday in New Zealand doing the Lord of the Rings film set tour. Vodafone offer all of the latest handsets, such as the iPhone 4, available on pay as you go and contract – both of which qualify you for the promotion.

Roaming charges result in people barely using their mobiles on holiday, and this is neither beneficial to the networks, nor to their customers. Without it, everyone will be able to enjoy the summer, and not have to battle with complicated public phone boxes, only with instructions in the Hungarian language of Magyar to see them through the procedure.

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