Update: T-Mobile have stopped offering this booster for £15/month.
Last week I asked if T-Mobile UK's 'BlackBerry World Email 30 Day Booster' could be as good as it sounded for roaming data - unlimited use for £4 per day or £15 per month anywhere world-wide. It seems it is.
Although T-Mobile's customer services initially did a terrible job of allaying my fears that this deal had a hidden sting in the tail, their official Twitter presence clarified:
- This tariff genuinely does offer unlimited data - there is no differentiation of types of traffic as for some domestic tariffs.
- The monthly pricing cap does not cut users off once reached - it is genuinely only a price cap.
- You may connect a PlayBook tablet to a Blackberry handset with this deal, but tethering any other type of device isn't allowed.
- The £15 per month add-on is charged each month (not a one-time addition) and can be started / stopped via customer services.
Although Blackberry-only this is a fantastic deal for frequent travellers - especially those travelling outside the EU regularly. Roaming data costs in the US are typically many pounds per megabyte.
This deal may even beat Vodafone's 'Data Traveller' offering of 25MB per day (either inclusive in some tariffs or for a low daily cost) which reverts to a 'pounds per megabyte' model once the bundled allowance is exceeded, albeit with the advantage of supporting any type of handset.
Perhaps at last data roaming pricing is an area that operators will begin to compete on... I'm seriously considering moving my Blackberry to T-Mobile for this deal as I agree with Ewan's Mobile Industry Review post noting Three (my current operator) is way behind in this area.
Credit: My thanks to Dan Carter for helping with some of the research.