Three launches Go Roam Around the World Extra

Mobile network operator Three has announced improvements to its roaming offer with a “Go Roam Around the World Extra” (long name!) package. Launching tomorrow, the service will allow its customers to make calls, send and receive text messages and use inclusive data in over 160 countries, up from the 71 countries for the existing non-extra package.

Since Brexit, we have seen increasing costs for many mobile phone contracts in the UK as we no longer benefit from the EU roaming regulations within the single market.

Customers can sign up to inclusive passes, or pay a £7 daily roaming charge to use their standard UK allowance abroad for 24 hours. Although the announcement says “24 hours”, we have seen this mean “midnight to midnight” with other networks before (and who can guess the time zone). Whilst these are often more expensive than buying a local SIM card (or using tools like Esimdb for data eSIMs on more modern phones), they are way better than what used to happen a decade ago where you could return to a bill running into thousands of pounds. Ofcom recently announced more protections for holidaymakers due to inadvertent roaming around border regions.

It’s also possible to buy 3-day, one week or two week passes before travel for additional cost savings and an additional two days free. If all you need is data, in 89 countries you can get 24 hours of data for £5 with a Data Passport.

“International Travel is hugely important for many of our customers especially as we enter the Summer. This significant growth of our Go Roam offering will ensure that customers can now visit even more countries and continue to use their phone hassle free. This experience is further improved on our Three You Way plans or through our Roaming Add-Ons.”

Mark Gardiner, Director of Consumer, Three UK 

Sound confusing? What we always end up doing every time we travel to a new destination is call the provider and ask them as in our experience the ‘roaming cost caps’ get removed when making changes to our accounts. The sad reality is there is no consistency across networks for how roaming charges are applied causing huge confusion. It is great to see Three create more options that save customers money, but we did wish there was a clearer system across the board.