Three: Spain and New Zealand are now Feel Like Home countries, starting in April

I have to say I am seriously, seriously liking the look of Three nowadays. I swapped to them last October for my main line and I have been enjoying their service.

Their Feel At Home offering (where you can use internet, call and text on the same basis as your domestic plan) is now set to expand to New Zealand and Spain. That will bring their total Feel At Home countries to 16! Their international roaming team has obviously been playing a continual series of blinders to allow them to offer this.

To experience the joy of zero-additional-cost international roaming, Three’s PR sent me out a nano-sim to test whilst I was at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday.

And it was brilliant.

You know it was. I knew it would be. I ate up the megabytes, I really did. I took a few calls. I happily answered the British Airways post-flight text survey questions without panicking about the fees.

Ordinarily if you’re a Three customer and you head over to Spain, you’ll need to stump up £5/day for the same privilege at the moment. £5 is pretty reasonable in the context of one day. The real problem is when you’re lucky enough to find yourself in Spain for 10 days. If you bought the £5 every day that would cost £50! It starts to add up. It’s the same situation with the other operators who’ll charge you similar amounts for inclusive daily usage abroad.

Here’s the full country list for Feel At Home (minus Spain and New Zealand until April):

So Feel At Home rocks.

Ben Smith over at Wireless Worker and co-presenter on our 361 Degrees Podcast was in the States over Christmas and absolutely loved the ability to roam without having to worry. It’s the way ahead.

And goodness me if you’ve got family in New Zealand or if you find yourself traveling there on a regular basis, swapping your service to Three could be a seriously compelling decision!

Feel At Home is available to every Three customer, contract, month-to-month contract, PAYG or otherwise. (If you’re PAYG, you need to convert your credit into an add-on). It’s configured automatically — i.e. they’ve done the work on their billing systems — so you don’t need to do anything. Just go to the Feel At Home country, turn on ‘roaming’ and boom, you’re good to go.

Spain and New Zealand officially join the Feel At Home country list from the 1st of April 2015. There’s more detail on everything at the  Feel At Home page.

Thank you Three!

One other point: If you’re booking a holiday shortly, Three have arranged a 12% discount with Expedia for their customers. That’s worth a look! Full details here — and claim before 6th April.