Three abolishes international roaming costs in seven countries

Three has become the first mobile operator to abolish international roaming charges for UK customers travelling to seven countries.

The Feel At Home scheme, as Three has dubbed it, means customers that travel to Australia, Italy, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Hong Kong and the Republic of Ireland will not have to pay extra charges for using their phones while abroad.

It is expected the scheme will be widened to include more countries as time goes on.

The company announced the move in a blog post, and explained that any calls or text messages customers make will be covered by their usual allowance.

"Just carry on as you were. It's that easy. If you have 5,000 texts in your package you can text 5,000 times from Australia, if you really want to," the blog post explained.

If customers do exceed the limits of their plans while abroad, they will be charged "special roaming rates", which Three claims will be lower than its standard roaming rate.

Feel at Home will be open to pay-as-you-go, contract, mobile broadband and business customers, confirmed Three, and will not require any action from users to take hold.

"You'll just arrive in a Feel At Home country, wait for your phone to pick up any local network and away you go," the blog post continued.

"You'll be able to use your phone just as you did before and with no extra charges and no nasty surprises on your bill when you get home."

Three's announcement follows on from the European Commission's declaration of intent last week about cutting roaming costs across Europe.

A European roaming cap came into force on the 1 July 2013. This reduced the cap on voice calls to 24 cents per minute and reduced the cost per MB to 45 cents.

Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission, is said to have wanted to reduce the cost of voice calls to 3 cents (2.56p) per minute between July 2014 and June 2022.

Reports suggested Kroes' plans to reduce the cost of roaming further had been shelved last week, although this was denied by a European Commission spokesperson last week.