Roaming in Australia

[MarkroamingOz]

I am going to Australia for 30 days from mid December. I currently pay around £70 a month but I don’t have any go roam passes when I log into my app online. So far as I understand I will need to buy two 14 day passes and a few extra days. Overall my bill will be £60 x 2 and £5x2 for roaming and my £70 each month. Overall £270 over the two months and also anything outside my allowances. This seems to be daylight robbery. Also I understand I am limited from my much larger data to just 12GB. Yet I’m paying £130 for roaming? I just keep thinking I’m misunderstanding? Can someone explain is this right!?
also what is the difference between go roam atw pass and go roam atw extra pass? 

[JonathanB]

Hi @MarkroamingOz,

Great questions, I think the best place to start is explaining Go Roam and the different tiers it has. There's Go Roam in Europe, Go Roam Around The World, and Go Roam Around The World Extra. You can check more info about which applies to any destination on the Roaming Support page here.

So Europe destinations are £2 per day, ATW is £5 per day, and ATW Extra is £7 per day. So as Australia is an Around The World destination, so no need to buy the more expensive ATW Extra passes.

As you've mentioned, fair usage is 12GB per month, this resets in line with your allowances, so if your trip is crossing over between two billing months then you won't be limited to 12GB for the entire stay. You can check when your allowances refresh in your My3 account. If the volume of data you need is more important than making calls or texts, or you need to use data more intensively on any particular days, you can also opt for a Data Passport. This Add On costs £5 per day, but does give you unlimited data abroad in qualifying destinations, including Australia.

As to the question of overall cost, I appreciate where you're coming from here, but please bear in mind that we're a UK provider, not an Australian one. Go Roam is a service intended for short term trips, to help maintain the convenience of keeping in touch like at home. There's commercial costs to supply roaming services for both your home network and the one you're visiting, but we do try to make the cost to customers as fair and competitive as possible.

You can keep your data roaming switched off when not required, and receive incoming calls and messages for free whilst away. It may be worth looking at local providers for a short term PAYG SIM, rather than paying for passes for your entire stay.

I hope this helps,
Jonathan