Vodafone slashes cost of international phone calls this summ

Vodafone’s UK customers will pay less for mobile phone calls made while visiting 33 countries in Europe as well as Australia and New Zealand this summer. The mobile network has announced that customers opting into their Passport programme will be able to make calls and send texts at the same rate as if they were calling within the UK from 1 June until the end of August. If you have a free allowance, the call or text will be included in that. The deal is also open to business users on Anytime or Your Plan price plans.

The promotion is designed to draw attention to the network’s Passport offering in which customers pay a 75p connection charge and then make calls and send texts at the same rate as they do in the UK. From tomorrow, customers who don't currently use it can sign up for free by texting the word 'Passport' to 97888 if they pay monthly or to 2345 if they use Pay as you go, or they can visit http://www.vodafone.co.uk/passport. Customers who are already part of the scheme will not pay the connection charge for the next three months. Anyone joining Passport can choose to opt out after the summer.

The network is also permanently cutting the cost of calling overseas from the UK from 15 May to between 5 and 30p a minute, depending on the country.

Customers can sign up to the new international rates by calling 36888, texting the word 'international' to 2345 from their handset or visiting vodafone.co.uk/international.

Neither deal addresses the cost of using mobile data abroad when using a BlackBerry or similar device.