Cable giant Virgin Media UK has launched a range of new 'Travel Passes' for European Mobile Broadband and Internet roaming. These aim to offer a more affordable solution for customers who would still like to go online when travelling outside of the UK.

EU Travel Passes – Mobile Internet

Travel Passes for mobile internet include a one hour Travel Pass for £4.00 or a 24 hour Travel Pass for £6.00. To activate a mobile internet EU Travel Pass, customers simply text BUY + pass name (e.g. 24HR or 1HR) to short code 23456.

EU Travel Passes – Mobile Broadband

There are four different choices of mobile broadband EU Travel Passes, which allow customers to access data for one day (£10 for 10MB), 3 days (£15 for 15MB), 7 days (£30 for 30MB) and even a 30 day pass (£60 for 60MB). Activating a mobile broadband pass is also SMS based with the customer texting BUY + pass name (e.g. 1DAY or 3DAY) to short code 23456.


The prices are a good improvement, though roaming data usage in general remains costly for everything except the most basic of webpage and email usage. However it will be some years yet before the kind of GigaByte usage allowances that we see with local UK Mobile Broadband packages are plausible for European roaming.