With "Vodafone Roaming Promise", international calls are almost as cheap as domestic ones during the Easter holidays

Düsseldorf, 6 April 2006. The Easter holidays coincide with the beginning of the tourist season. Vodafone makes low-cost calls in and from many foreign networks easy for term contract and prepaid customers. Forget about the public debate on roaming rates being far more expensive than domestic ones. Vodafone customers can make calls in 20 foreign Vodafone networks at transparent prices. They can book the Vodafone Roaming Promise option free of charge and make calls to their friends and family at home, or calls within the foreign country, at practically the same rates as their domestic tariffs plus a one-off charge of 75 cents for each call. The option enables Vodafone customers to save over 35 percent of costs when making international calls. They don’t have to pay any additional monthly basic charge or activation costs.

The idea behind Vodafone Roaming Promise is to make calls within and from a foreign country easy, transparent and inexpensive. This option has been exclusively available from Vodafone since summer 2005. Vodafone customers benefit from access to the company’s own networks in 20 countries around the world. They can book the roaming option free of charge in addition to their regular tariff. In the Easter holidays, the Vodafone Roaming Promise option enables term contract or prepaid customers to take their domestic tariff with them on holiday and make international calls at almost the same rate as domestic calls. Two examples: customers with the MinutePackage 200 tariff pay EUR 1 for a five-minute domestic call to a Vodafone or fixed network number. When they call from the Spanish Vodafone network to the German Vodafone or fixed network, they pay EUR 1.75. A 10-minute call from the Italian Vodafone network to the German Vodafone or fixed network costs EUR 2.75, and a 10-minute call from the German Vodafone network in Berlin to a Vodafone customer in Hamburg costs EUR 2.00.

The principle is simple: with the Vodafone Roaming Promise option, standard international calls made via the Vodafone networks in 20 countries around the world are charged at the same per-minute rates as calls from the German Vodafone network to the same recipient. Calls within the foreign country are also charged at the same rate as calls within Germany. If the customer has a tariffs with free talktime, the free talktime (except tariff options) can be used for roaming calls. The customer only pays an additional flat rate charge of EUR 0.75 per call. Even when Vodafone customers who are abroad receive international calls, they still only pay the one-off EUR 0.75 charge instead of the onward routing costs from the border. An additional charge of 20 cents a minute is only made for long calls after the 61st minute. The calls are billed in low cost 60/30 increments.

The Vodafone Roaming Promise option can reduces the cost of calls for term contract customers by over 50 percent. For example, a three-minute standard call from the Italian Vodafone network to Germany in the new roaming tariff option is billed as three minutes of talktime at the same rate as a call made from the German Vodafone network, plus EUR 0.75.

CallYa customers can make savings of more than 35 percent in many cases. For example, if a customer with the CallYa Basic tariff makes a 3-minute call from Australia to a German Vodafone number, he can save 79 percent of costs with the Roaming Promise option. Another example: a CallYa Special customer on holiday in Spain who receives a call and talks for three minutes will pay 68 percent less than he would with the normal tariff.

Vodafone Roaming Promise is currently available in the following Vodafone networks: Albania, Australia, Belgium (Proximus), Czech Republic (Oskar/Cesky Mobile), Egypt, France (SFR), Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malta, New Zealand, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania (Connex/Mobilfon), Spain, Sweden, Switzerland (Swisscom mobile) and the UK.

To take advantage of the “Vodafone Roaming Promise”, all you have to do is register free of charge by calling 12 225 or your customer adviser. CallYa customers with the CallYa Basic or CallYa Special tariffs can book the Roaming Promise option. Otherwise, the Vodafone World tariff applies for term contract customers and the CallYa Roaming tariff for prepaid customers.

Contact Information

Maximilian Schöberl

Head of Corporate Communications

Vodafone Germany

Contact via E-mail