The Great Escape: Spark drops roaming rates as Kiwis' data use overseas soars

France is one the countries covered by Spark's new roaming plans. Photo / 123rf

The boom in travel and roaming overseas has led Spark to overhaul its rates.

Spark has seen roaming data use jump by nearly 60 per cent over the past year across its most popular travel destinations.

New Spark roaming packs offer seven days of roaming across 33 destinations for just $20 (buying 500MB, 200 incoming and 200 outgoing minutes, and 200 texts) or $15 (buying 500MB data) and are available to Spark business, prepay and pay monthly customers.

Last month rival Vodafone said it would more than double the number of countries in which its on-account customers can use their phones in the same way they would at home.

Its daily roaming destinations offer, which costs an extra $5 per day, now extends to over 70 countries.

Spark's chief executive of Home, Mobile and Business, Jason Paris, said most Kiwis travel for an average of five days at a time, so weekly packs were a much better fit for their roaming needs.

The company said that compared to the old rate per dollar, the new $20 pack offers up to five times as much data, and four to 10 times as many minutes and texts, working out at $2.85 per day when spread across the seven days. The new $15 data roaming pack offers around 60 per cent to 95 per cent more data per dollar.

Paris said nearly a third of customers travelled to more than one destination each trip.

''We've been able to cover the places that matter, including 17 of the top 20 places New Zealanders travel to.''

During the past year the number of New Zealanders travelling overseas for work and on holiday had risen more than 11 per cent to 2.74 million. ''This highlights the significant growth in demand for roaming services - a trend Spark expects to accelerate in coming years as the global travel boom continues,'' said Paris.

Based on a 2014 New Zealand Telecommunications Forum international mobile roaming guide, 500MB of data would equate to around 25 hours of web browsing or social media use.

About half of travellers turn off their data when overseas for fear of getting a big bill or not knowing what roaming rates are, Spark said.

The new roaming packs cover countries where up to 93 per cent of New Zealanders go.

They are: Australia, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, US, Canada, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.