‘Feel at Home’ enables customers to make calls to the UK from Ireland, Australia, Italy, Austria, Hong Kong, Sweden and denmark using their standard price plan.
Three has abolished roaming charges in seven countries with the launch of its new ‘Feel at Home’ offer. It has become the first UK operator to introduce such a plan.
Customers will be able to call, text and use data from their UK price plan, initially available in Ireland, Australia, Italy, Austria, Hong Kong, Sweden and Denmark.
Feel at Home will automatically activate as soon as the person arrives in one of the listed countries. Customers can roam onto any networks in these countries, and not just other Three operations.
The operator said that if people exceed the limits, they will still benefit from roaming charges lower then Three’s standard roaming rates.
These are 20p per minute for calls, 7p per text message and 10 per MB. Alternatively, if customer’s exceed their allowances and don’t want to be charged roaming rates, they can use My3 on their mobile in the Feel at Home countries to buy normal UK add-ons.
Three marketing director Thomas Malleschitz said: “We want to make sure our customers have the best possible mobile experience. By abolishing expensive roaming charges in select countries, we are allowing our customers to get even more value from their minutes, texts and data abroad by removing the fear associated with staying in touch while travelling.”
This move from Three is a welcome relief for Brits travelling abroad. For too long, mobile users have faced coming home to the holiday souvenir from hell – an eye-watering phone bill. Despite worldwide caps being in place and networks offering special packages to help keep a lid on roaming costs, holidaying Brits that have returned to mobile bill shock pay an extra £120 on average.
Although there were whispers of the EU scrapping roaming charges altogether, nothing has been confirmed yet. So it’s great to see a network take the initiative and help protect customers with a simple and easy to understand proposition, at no extra cost.
However, with the plan only available in seven countries, customers will need to check that they’ll be covered. While the late launch means it will have just missed the summer holiday season, it is in good time for those planning to catch some rays this winter in sunnier climes. We look forward to seeing the net widen and more countries included as the service develops.
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