Aussie telcos undercut on data roaming

Australian telco providers might be shafting their users on mobile roaming rates; however, prepaid SIM provider TravelSIM announced yesterday that it had reduced its data roaming charges for Europe.

TravelSIM said that it is reducing its data roaming charges for most of Europe, from US$3.60 per MB to US$1.00 per MB.

The company, which is an offshoot of Canadian-founded CSC Telecom, charges in 10kB increments, and has no flag fall or connection fees for phone calls or data usage.

In addition, TravelSIM has a web-based service that allows text messages to be sent to TravelSIM card holders free of charge.

Vodafone also recently reduced the rates for data roaming recently, although the price reductions were only for Australians roaming in New Zealand.

The New Zealand and Australian governments have announced that they will investigate the prices for Trans-Tasman roaming, considering whether regulation is required. A final decision is expected in 2012.

Data roaming rates for Australians going overseas have remained among some of the highest in the world.

A recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report found that even when Australian travellers went to their least-expensive destination for data roaming, the average cost was between US$2.50 per MB and US$7.65 per MB for a 20MB block of data.