Telstra Has Hiked Up Global Roaming Rates For The Holidays

Telstra is slugging customers with higher international roaming rates in the lead-up to the holiday season. From this week, the telco’s International Casual Traveller Data Packs will be replaced with costlier Travel Passes. Meanwhile Telstra’s excess data fees have more than tripled. Let’s take a look at the damage.

Paris image from Shutterstock

We recently commended Telstra for its excellent Go Mobile BYO plan, which currently offers 7GB of data on a 12-month contract for just $40 per month. Unfortunately, the other shoe just dropped, with international roaming rates going up in a big way.

“From 3 December 2015, the existing Travel Passes will be replaced with new Travel Passes, for post-paid mobile and mobile broadband customers (except those on Premium Plans),” Telstra explains on its website.

“Existing International Casual Traveller Data Packs will no longer be available for post-paid mobile broadband customers and you will now be able to purchase the new Travel Passes.”

Here’s a look at Telstra’s new prices and excess data charges:

Zone 1

(New Zealand)

Zone 2

(New Zealand, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand)

Zone 3

(Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Mexico, Nauru, Netherlands, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovak Rep., Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UAE, UK, USA, Vanuatu + Zone 1 and 2 countries)

Compared to its previous offerings, Telstra’s new data packs are more expensive across the board. As pointed out by Gizmodo, a 30-day travel pack for Europe and the US now costs $450 (up from $300).

A 7-day pass for Indonesia and Thailand has increased from $35 to $70. (Although you do get 175MB of extra data.) Meanwhile, excess data fees have increased a whopping 300%; going from 3c per MB to 10c per MB.

If you’re heading overseas this holiday period, we suggest looking at another provider or making as much use of public Wi-Fi as possible. If you want to stretch your data allowance as far as possible, check out this guide.

[Via SMH]