As any international traveller can attest, roaming overseas with a South African Sim card can be prohibitively expensive, with data charges often running to hundreds of rand per megabyte.
Now Vodacom has introduced a product that should help jetsetters reduce their roaming charges and avoid bill shock. The product, Travel Saver, costs R30/day when roaming and offers lower rates on networks in 26 countries.
Travel Saver is free for contract customers to opt into. If call, SMS or data usage activity happens while the customer is overseas, the lower fees will kick in automatically. If no billable activity takes place, then no daily fee will be applied.
Vodacom Travel Saver customers will pay R2,50/minute for both incoming and outgoing phone calls, 80c for SMS messages and R2/MB for data.
The service is available in a number of popular markets in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. However, it does not apply in the US.
The service is available on all networks in destination countries.
The countries are Egypt, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Ghana, Lesotho, Tanzania and Mozambique in Africa; Australia, India and New Zealand in Asia-Pacific; Qatar in the Middle East; and the UK, Turkey, Spain, Romania, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Ireland, Italy Greece, Hungary, France, Germany, Albania and the Czech Republic in Europe.
To opt into the service, users must SMS the word “SAVE” to 123 or +2782123. To deactivate the service, they must send the word “SAVEOFF” to the same number. — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media