Vodafone Passport

Ever since I destroyed my internet connection and my boyfriend went back to England for the summer, I've been suffering from communication technology withdrawal. After a week at home where I socialised with my friends all day every day and abused my parents' broadband, I was a little sad to be coming back to Italy and my 50 cent per minute international mobile calls.

So when I arrived at the airport and saw an advert for Vodafone's summer promotion, my heart leapt. I have an O2 phone in the UK, but Vodafone have abolished roaming charges in Europe for July and August and are giving away a free sim card when you buy £15 worth of credit. Because I bought my phone from the Carphone Warehouse, where most of the phones are not network-locked, all I needed to do was put in my new sim and activate Vodafone passport and I was ready to go. From Italy, or anywhere else in Europe, I can now phone home for no more than it would cost me to make the call in the UK.

I have the same promotion on my Italian phone but that only lets me call Italy when I'm away. Vodafone Italia also has a promotion called One Nation that lets you make cheap international calls on your Italian mobile in Italy, but after I activated it and accidentally spent a fortune calling Britain and France, I found out that it doesn't apply to European countries. (Why???)

At the moment, the Vodafone promotion is only for July and August, but I'm hoping that, seeing as it seems a great way for them to get ahead of the competition, they'll continue the promotion for at least as long as it takes for me to get broadband and Skype in my new flat. And, knowing France, that could be a long time!