Consumer watchdog Which? has reported on roaming charges for tablet computers such as the iPad and its competitors. It’s never cheap to use your device abroad but Vodafone comes out as the least expensive option.

Vodafone charges £200 per gigabyte of roaming data in Europe on a tablet and £600 in the US. This sounds expensive but a lot is swallowed up by the data carriers in those territories charging back for handling UK customers’ data.

The prices remain significantly cheaper than any competitor’s pricing, all of which starts off with a four figure sum per gigabyte in Europe, topping £3K in one case.

Many buyers of iPads, Samsung Galaxy Tabs and the new Motorola Xoom (among the other tablet offerings) will be consumers rather than businesses and won’t have much idea that the price for checking a quick email or going into a video call with the family could – in the case of the £3000+ bills – quite literally break their bank account.

For businesses it’s easier to work out whether taking the tablet abroad is going to be worth doing. It’s a simple enough set of questions. First, is the existing data deal the best one, particularly when the tablet is going overseas?

If the answer to that is “yes” then clearly the next question is “will the income or other benefits justify the outlay” as it is in any other business instance. There can be issues other than the purely financial affecting this equation; a high-spending customer may need a service which in itself proves loss-making or break-even only but which will add to an account which is overall very profitable, for example.

And just as you’ll find with rural areas in the UK, check you’ll get coverage where you’re going – the thing’s got to work, after all.

Once these questions are answered positively remember to give your carrier a little notice that you’ll need to activate roaming. After this you should enjoy the same 3G service you do in the UK – it’s just worth going into the deal knowing costs will change on this occasion.

Guy Clapperton