Telecommunications giant Vodafone said it plans to expand LTE roaming into 18 countries later this year at the same roaming rate it charges for current 3G roaming services. The carrier noted it already offers LTE roaming across its own networks in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain.
The newly expanded markets will include its own or partner networks in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Customers will also be able to roam across other operators in Austria, Belgium, France, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland.
Limiting excessive roaming charges has been on the regulatory agenda in Europe for some time now. Measures already enacted have curtailed charges in the region by 91% since 2007, according to the EU. The latest round of legislation, proposed in September 2013, calls for ending roaming premiums within the EU by 2016. The plan is to use a “carrot and stick” approach: carriers can be free from regulation if they extend their plans to allow their users to travel to other EU countries; otherwise, customers will be allowed to leave their operator when traveling to take cheaper roaming services from another company, without changing their SIM card.
A recent report from iPass found that mobile data roaming costs remain a significant hurdle for enterprise customers with employees coming back from trips abroad with monumental bills tied to their continued use of cellular and Wi-Fi services or to a pile of e-mails and missed correspondence because they turned off all mobile data connectivity.
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