With mixed opinions, it appears that to protect customers from roaming charges into the thousands of phones, 3 has taken the decision to remove data roaming from it’s Mobile Broadband by default.  What this means is that if you buy a Mobile Broadband device, or have previously bought one (even if you’ve used it abroad before), you are likely to find that it now will only work in the UK and on other 3 networks around the world, but not on any other network.

On the plus side, this protects you from large unwelcome bills, and if you are willing to accept the risk of large bills, you can still contact 3 and ask for data roaming to be re-enabled on the account, although this is likely to still have a limit placed on the account to minimise your spend.  With the “3 Like Home” policy, when you roam on other 3 networks, you are treated as being at home, and your inclusive minutes, text and data can be used, and hence on these networks there is no need for any limits.

On the down side, we’re not sure if this is receiving sufficient publicity from 3, and could leave some business customers stranded, or even if they are willing to foot the bill, they may find the roaming limits too strict to allow the device to be useful at all.  It’s also said that the number of “I’ve just received a bill for thousands of pounds” situations is very small, so 3 may have over protected their customers.

3 already have low roaming prices across the EU (25p/min to make a call to landlines and mobiles anywhere in the EU, and 10p/min to receive calls); we remember when it costs more than that to use a mobile in the UK! With rates like these, people are encouraged to use their phones abroad, and hopefully 3’s decision will limit the number of people coming back from holiday this year complaining about their high roaming bills.

Overall, we feel it’s a sensible default position (we believe 3 don’t enable roaming on mobile phones by default either), but that low usage limit may be too low for many who are happy to pay the bill.

Story courtesy of ZDNet [Via Pat Phelan]

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.