3Ireland and Vodafone have followed 02 Ireland’s lead and abolished roaming charges for customers between Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK.
Both companies eliminated the charges on the same day last month, 14 March, but took slightly different approaches.
Vodafone Ireland abolished roaming charges for all bill paying customers traveling to Northern Ireland and the UK. Prepaid customers will have to pay a 29c connection fee, 63 per cent lower than the current charge.
3Ireland chose to abolish roaming charges for all customers – business and consumer. It also allowed for calls made and received while roaming in the UK and Northern Ireland to be included as part of its monthly price plan bundles.
The company also scrapped international calling charges to all UK numbers from Ireland by reducing call charges from 49c to 30c, the same price as local calls. Customers can use up to half their monthly bundled minutes to make calls.
There are no extra charges when roaming on another operator’s network.
Robert Finnegan, 3 Ireland’s managing director, claimed its roaming scheme offered “the best value in the market for Irish consumers. In our opinion, other operators’ roaming solutions do not go far enough, and many of their customers will continue to bear the burden of unfair roaming charges”.
Unsurprisingly, Vodafone had a different view. CEO Teresa Elder claimed Vodafone’s offer was “the best in the Irish marketplace because it benefits all our customers, for both business and personal use”.
3Ireland and Vodafone were both keen to stress that their announcements were wider ranging than O2’s because they applied to all customers. O2 abolished roaming charges between Ireland and Northern Ireland for all customers but only applied them to business customers for roaming between the UK and Ireland.
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