Vodafone helps keep roaming costs down on holiday

The new Vodafone Passport will mean better roaming deals for Vodafone customers, although data abroad can still be expensive.

The Passport means that 2.5 million Vodafone customers will have access to data service on their mobile phones abroad for just £4.99 per day for up to 25MB - the equivalent of 20p per MB; with additional 25MB chunks charged at an additional £4.99. Vodafone reckons that 25MB is enough to browse around 250 internet pages, read and reply to 25 emails, navigate yourself to a restaurant using Google Maps, read eight news stories on the BBC website, change your status on Facebook and watch three 90 second videos on YouTube.... and if you want to do all that on holiday perhaps you need to consider going somewhere more interesting next year.

For users who don't want to do all that, Vodafone is providing granular pricing under 1MB - so if you pop online to check your email once while you're away and stay below 1MB of data usage, you'll only be charged per kb. Receiving and replying to a short email  is estimated to use around 100KB, which would set you back just 50p.

And if you don't want to do all that on your little mobile phone screen, take your laptop away with you and get 50MB for £9.99 in Europe or £29.99 outside Europe - which despite 3's recent claims is the cheapest overseas mobile broadband data rate by a considerable margin.

It's worth remembering if you do take Vodafone up on their new roaming rates - which start from today - that billing is worked out on UK time, so when you're paying for a certain amount of data per day, that day is from midnight to midnight UK time.