Vodafone has announced simpler and lower pricing for using a smartphone while travelling in Europe. The new tariffs provide daily and monthly rates for customers to use their domestic smartphone data plans when they are abroad.

Those customers who travel occasionally can take a domestic data plan abroad for €2 per day, which represents a cost reduction of up to 60 per cent over existing plans and includes an increase to the data allowance. UK customers will get 25MB of data per day for their €2 in Vodafone’s 15 key European countries; 5MB of data per day in other Eureopan countries. (For the same daily rate, for some reason, a Vodafone Italy customers gets a daily data allowance of 50MB.)

Alternatively, frequent travellers can select to take a price plan which includes data roaming within their monthly domestic package. In the UK, this is included free of charge for all plans of $40 per month and above. For price plans below £40 per month, the data roaming pack costs £10 per month for 25MB per day. Users can opt to switch this pack off and on from month to month, depending on whether or not they are travelling abroad. Both offers are available for consumer or business customers.

“This is the year of the smartphone and we want our 35m European data users to feel free to use their devices in Europe in the same way as they do at home,” says Vodafone CEO, Vittorio Colao. “We expect smartphone sales in Europe to grow from 32 per cent today to more than 70 per cent by 2013, and we want to drive that growth with what we believe to be the best value, market-leading roaming data packages.”

The new plans are being rolled-out in Vodafone’s major European markets during November and December 2010, in time for the winter holiday season, and across the company’s entire European footprint by summer, 2011. They are being backed by a major marketing campaign with the strapline: ‘Feel free to use your smartphone abroad’.