3 isn't quite in Israel

The first thing I did when I arrived in Israel was to switch on my 3UK Nokia E65.

I was a bit confused when I saw the handset activate on to “IL Orange”. I hadn’t done much in the way of research about 3’s presence in Israel beyond reading the fact that ‘they’re in Israel’ in every press release.

Case in point: This is the text that appears on the ‘Notes to the Editors’ bit of every 3 press release:

3 UK is a member of the HWL group of 3G companies, which include 3G operations in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy and Sweden.

I didn’t think that Israel was actually a joint deal with Orange (I found out via multiple sources at the same time, after I’d been knocking the texts back and forth to home!)

Ergo it’s 90p a minute to call London — or 30p if you’re using SMS Text News sponsor MaxRoam (I am), which, interestingly is also roaming on IL Orange.

So now I know.

For the avoidance of doubt, the 3 At Home countries where you can freely roam using your UK minutes are:

– Austria
– Denmark
– Ireland
– Sweden
– Australia
– Hong Kong

Need to commit to memory.