25GB of Data for $31/month?? Don’t Rush To Sign Up Quite Yet..

Yesterday tech journal ars technica published a story about UK mobile provider Three and their 'Feel at Home' prepaid plan that allows you to use your device abroad at no extra cost.

If you subscribe to their unlimited data plan, when roaming in one of their partnered network carriers abroad, customers are limited to just 25GB of data usage.

And that begged the question from US based consumers if they could buy a Three SIM card plan, have it shipped to them and just use the 25GB as a primary connection in the US to save some bucks.

After all, 25GB for $31 is a sweet deal, regardless of what the partner carrier might be behind the scenes (turns out to be T-Mobile and AT&T.)

This is again a case of Read the Fine Print of the offer when it seems too good to be true. Here are the catches with this particular plan as to why it's not an ideal options for US based RVers:

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  First of all, Three states that these plans are designed for UK residents who are on holiday or business trips, not for extended periods abroad. So while you might be able to finagle getting such a SIM into your US resident hands, more than likely, you'll have your service cut off after a prolonged time outside of the UK.

• Next, while they do allow streaming and VPN access while abroad, they do state that service will be slower than while 'at home' in the UK.
• But the big stickler is that they clearly state that while abroad, personal hotspot (tethering) is not allowed - it is on device only data. That means no sharing of the data with laptops and such. Even while in the UK, all-you-can-eat data plans only included 4GB/month of tethering.

We consider this an option not worth pursuing for US based RVers.

However, if you're visiting the US from the UK, this may indeed be a viable plan to get internet access while in the US. They do offer mobile hotspot and tablet plans with capped data that include the 'Feel at Home' travel perk. That might make for a great option for sightseeing across the USA and other countries.

Incidentally, both T-Mobile and Sprint now offer international roaming data as a perk of their plans for us US based cellular consumers.