3 has one million mobile broadband users in Europe

Kudos to 3.

They led the way, in the UK at least, with the tenner-a-month USB mobile broadband revolution.

This shows demand is strong for mobile broadband in all 3’s territories, including the UK, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and Austria…

… says the press release I got in this morning.

Christian Salbaing, MD of European Telecoms at Hutchison isn’t impressed with the roaming data rates demanded by other networks. He has a good old dig at them (aimed, I reckon, at the EC regulation chappies):

“Typical retail roaming prices are literally hundreds of times what customers expect to pay domestically. A European consumer might pay around one Euro cent per megabyte at home, yet pay a premium of 360-times that simply to cross a border.”

Ridiculous. Aye.

Christian obviously goes on to point out that 3’s “3 Like Home” tariffs enable data roaming on 3’s sister networks without additional cost. (Elsewhere 3 charges around £3 (€3.79) per megabyte to its customers, based primarily on the wholesale rate charged.)

If you’re arriving into the UK and find yourself data roaming on 3, you can work out just how much your incumbent operator is creaming you with this statement from Christian:

3 has demonstrated its commitment to bringing down the price of roaming across the EU by offering Europe’s mobile networks a reciprocal wholesale rate of just 25c per megabyte, [compared to the current average of nearly €4]. This offers even greater scope for compelling retail rates than the European Commission’s suggested wholesale level of 35c. Just five networks have agreed to take up the offer – suggesting a clear need for intervention.