Telstra hikes international roaming charges

Telstra has hiked one-off and excess data usage charges for international mobile roaming customers just ahead of the holiday season.

The telco's international travel pass roaming packages allows customers to access mobile connectivity overseas in three, seven, 14 and 30-day durations.

The packages include one-off charges, which have remained the same in two zones, but a new third, pricier zone has made using a the telco's mobile service in a number of countries substantially more expensive

The telco now offers three zones for the International Travel Pass.

It has removed Indonesia and Thailand from the lowest-priced zone and shifted it onto the more expensive second zone.

This means Telstra customers wanting to use the international travel pass in those countries will be slugged with double the one-off charges of $15, $35, $70 and $150 of Zone 1. They will retain unlimited calls and SMS texts to and from standard numbers.

The telco has introduced a third zone with even steeper one-off charges, which it has moved several countries from Europe, the Pacific Islands and the Middle East as well as India and the USA into.

Telstra mobile roaming customers travelling to zone three countries will be charged one-off fees of between $45 and $450 dependent on package - far steeper than the zone two charges they had previously paid.

The telco has also more than tripled excess data charges for the travel pass from three cents per megabyte to ten cents per extra megabyte.

However, data users will receive slightly bigger allowances for the various international travel pass packages.

The three-day package increases from 150 to 225 megabytes, whereas the seven-day, 14-day and 30-day offers have gone up to 525MB, 1.03GB and 2.20GB respectively, from 350MB, 700MB and 1.5GB.

Several new countries have also been added to the list of nations available for international travel passes, with Brazil, Argentina, and Chile included for the first time.

The new plans become active on December 8.