If you’re a Telstra customer about to jet off to an overseas destination for Christmas (like me), the carrier has just announced a new deal for international roaming that might simplify international roaming for you.
Telstra’s Travel Pass offers unlimited calls and SMSs (conditions apply, of course) for use while travelling for a period of 3, 7, 14 or 30 days. Passes are available for Zone 1 (New Zealand, Thailand, Indonesia and Bali) for $5/day and Zone 2 (basically, everywhere else) for $10/day. All Passes include a data allowance that works out to 50MB/day. If you use up your data allowance, you’ll pay $0.03/MB for more.
Full details are on Telstra’s just-updated International Roaming page.
We’re surprised it’s taken so long for Telstra to respond to Vodafone‘s $5/day Red Roaming, which we tried for ourselves late last year. Telstra has hit the right price point only for a few countries, and misses the mark almost entirely on data inclusions while travelling.
Also unknown? Whether or not you’ll receive a Lollipop update for your Nexus phone while travelling (we wouldn’t bet on it).
looks like it’s still better to get a local pre-paid account while abroad
If you keep your Telstra SIM in you won’t be getting the update. It’s blocked via the MNC (mobile network code) of the IMSI 🙂
Can you just take your TLS sim out, reboot and check for a system update?
Could work – but your best bet would be to put in a Vodafone or Optus SIM. Doesn’t even need to be active – just boot with it on WiFi.
Fantastic, I’ll give it a shot!
The one thing I complain to Telstra about when they phone me is how anti-competitive their global roaming is, its nice to see them make a change but its still too expensive and low on included data. I generally travel to the UK for work and I have a SIM that I use when there, I can travel pretty much anywhere in the world and it costs be £2/day, for that I get all plan inclusions. I’m considering changing to Vodafone as I feel they have a fair roaming option, as long as their coverage is good where I live…… Read more »
How much !!?
If you are going to the UK/Europe you pick up a Three SIM with All in One 15 and Feel at Home, and you can roam many EU countries (Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland) + othersand have all you can eat data in the UK for 30 days – $30
So this is more than 10x as expensive for practical purposes.
Wow, a local SIM is still so much better unless you are only going to be there for a few days.