O2 customers face the heaviest bills if they plan to use mobile data on holiday within the EU this summer, an investigation by Mobile Marketing has revealed. O2 customers, a well as those of Orange, will have to pay £3 per Megabyte (MB) of data downloaded, though in Orange’s case, customers who know they are going to use data while abroad can save money by buying a bundle before they go.

Vodafone emerges as the best-value network for data roaming in our study, charging just £1 per Megabyte up to 5MB, then £5 per 5MB thereafter. Next best is 3 UK at £1.25 per Megabyte, followed by T-Mobile on £1.50 per Megabyte. O2 offers a £10-per-month bolt-on which reduces the cost of making calls and makes it free to receive calls, instead of the typical 14p/minute charge, but the bolt-on does nothing to reduce the cost of mobile data.

While Orange is equally expensive for impulse users, those who plan ahead can get better rates. An Orange Travel bundle offers 3MB of data for £5, or 10MB for £12, both of which can be used over 30 days. Orange also offers a daily bundle, which offers 2MB of data for £2, or 50MB for £8.50.

The cost of making and receiving calls is broadly similar across all five networks at 38p per minute (35p for O2) and 14p to receive (15p with Vodafone). Similarly, all networks charge 10p to send a text back the UK, except Vodafone, which charges 11p.
When it comes to MMS messages, however, there are some notable differences. While O2 and 3UK both charge 25p, T-Mobile charges only 20p, but Vodafone charges 36p, plus a data charge, based on the size of the message. Orange is once again expensive, charging 70p for an MMS message of up to 50kb in file size, and £1 for anything over this.

A couple of months ago, the European Commission released a report that said that average consumer prices for data roaming had fallen, from €3.62 (£3.01) per MB to €2.66 (£2.21) at the end of 2009. Seen in this light, the prices being asked by the UK operators, with the exception of O2, don’t actually look too bad. Maybe they should start shouting a bit louder about them.

You can read more on this subject here.