AT&T switches up international roaming plans

You pay for convenience, they say, and there's nothing more convenient in the smartphone world than being able to step off a plane in a foreign country and your phone just works. No swapping SIM cards, no mucking about with APN settings. Today, AT&T announced a new set of international roaming plans that go into effect on June 1. They are as follows:

• 120 MB of data for $30 a month
• 300 MB of data for $60 a month
• 800 MB of data for $120 a month

And if you go over your allotment, it'll cost you another $30 for another 120 MB of data. 

By comparison, AT&T currently (for the next 24 hours anyway) has a 125 MB plan for $49.99, a 275 MB plan for $99, and an 800 MB plan for $199. The 50 MB, $24.99 plan is about to be dropped, but that's not really something you should have been considering anyway, given how data-hungry phones are these days.

Source: AT&T

O2 UK reveals new European roaming plans

Following the recent EU ruling on European roaming rates, O2 UK has announced its new "O2 Travel" service, which will launch from July. The service offers reduced European roaming charges compared to the networks' current price plans, which it'll have to abolish after the July deadline imposed by the EU. Instead of paying up to £40 for up to 50MB of Euro roaming data per month, O2 Travel will now offer 25MB each day, for a daily fee of £1.99. And voice calls are becoming cheaper too, with a one-off charge of 50p per call, with minutes being deducted from the customer's allowance for that month.

Interestingly, the new O2 Travel deals will also be available to O2 Pay As You Go customers -- traditionally PAYG users have been left in the lurch when trying to use mobile data aboard. Data costs the same as it does for contract customers, but there's a slightly different price plan for voice calls -- a 29p charge per call, then 8p per minute for the call's duration.

So good news for anyone roaming in Europe on O2, and we'd expect the other major British networks to reveal new roaming plans as the July deadline approaches.