We all know that using your phone on a roaming plan overseas can be a fast way to run up ludicrous bills, especially if you use data services as well. Who is the biggest offender in that field right now? It turns out the answer is Optus.
Dan Warne at Australian Business Traveller analysed the data roaming rates offered by Optus, Telstra and Vodafone, and found that Optus’ $20 a megabyte roaming rate put it well ahead of competitors. You can get slightly cheaper rates by prepaying in advance, but using any kind of data roaming exercise overseas is still a hugely expensive exercise. While Optus is due to introduce cheaper roaming plans as part of its membership of the Bridge Alliance group of telcos, that hasn’t actually happened yet.
As ever, we’d advise focusing on using Wi-Fi networks when overseas. Even if you’re paying your hotel $20 a day for the privilege, it will likely work out cheaper than data roaming. The other useful alternative is a local prepaid SIM. Hit the article for more price comparisons across the networks.
Optus is Australia’s worst network for data roaming pricing [Australian Business Traveller]
willemrt
Friday, May 13, 2011 at 1:18 PMDont I know it.. 2 mb of data cost me $80 in Japan. Plus the network tends to be flakey at home. Only a year and I can move to Telstra! Hooray.. err.. fail!
Dirk
Friday, May 13, 2011 at 1:48 PMAgreed. $3,000 bill from a one-week US trip. Walk into an AT&T and buy a SIM for US$20 and unlimited data for another $20-30. After my last world trip I had more SIMs than Jason Bourne.
Pete Leemeijer
Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 12:44 PMYep, consumed $690 for 5 days in London last year just checkng email and using Google Maps. Then to add insult to injury they suspended my account at 2am in the morning with no prior SMS or email, then I had to go buy another prepaid SIM just to call them to reactivate the number!
Telco Guy
Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 1:06 PMAlso the most targeted by fraudsters in the industry
:/
jr
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 8:11 AMTelco Guy, care to elaborate?
meesterzeegar
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 10:06 AMSometimes it’s not as easy as inserting a local SIM when overseas. Depending on the handset, some of us under contract have our devices locked to the Optus network. You’ll need to unlock your phone BEFORE you travel. And it’s not cheap.
mark
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 3:08 PMthey make it so expensive to discourage you from experiencing what good download speeds are achievable