bbman:

Note also Telecom where the first to launch fixed zone pricing, makes sense and gives customers price certainty. Good on Vodafone for following suit and offering this to most of their customers, the $1 per min to recieve is excellent, shame both carriesa re pinging $0.80c for txt messages. Good to see data prices fall soon.



The 80c per TXT is something that is steep but I can live with it because it isn't that different to what it was previously. A lot of people forget that previously you paid your normal SMS rate of 17c (since you don't pay GST while roaming) as well as the roaming SMS surcharge. Even a SMS in Australia cost 62c to send (45c surcharge + 17c) and on many other networks the surcharges were in the region of 60c - 90c which means the 80c rate is a good average.

Vodafone also couldn't bill you the 17c charge if you had a TXT addon or included TXT's on your plan even though these don't apply overseas which was lost revenue. If you went to Australia with a TXT2000 addon you only paid the 45c SMS surcharge and not the 17c SMS charge whereas somebody who doesn't have a TXT addon would pay the full price. Charging a flat fee for all roaming SMS's closes the loophole.

The biggest irony with roaming IMHO is that many charges are now more than what they were when I first travelled overseas in 1998.