Vodafone Australia adds Europe to roaming deal

Vodafone's Red customers travelling to 34 European countries from October 7 will now be able to pay AU$5 extra per day to keep using their mobile phones as though they were still in Australia.

The countries added are Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. They now join New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom in being included in the AU$5 per day deal announced by Vodafone in August.

Vodafone CEO Bill Morrow said that the company pushed to get the expanded offering in place before Christmas.

"We had a huge response when we announced our plans included the US, UK and NZ for just five bucks a day, so we pushed hard to include Europe before the Christmas holiday season kicks off," he said in a statement.

Morrow took aim at Telstra's recent announcement of a reduction in the price for its overseas data roaming packs, stating that data packs were confusing to customers.

"Buying a data pack and then trying to monitor your usage is messy and customers say they find it complicated, so we decided to simplify roaming by allowing our customers to use their plan overseas just as they would at home. Our customers love it," he said.