Finally. Finally someone has setup a useful worldwide data roaming service at a reasonable charge. Vodafone’s international service doesn’t quite cut it for me, especially when I’m only getting 25mb for whatever it is, £5 or something. I use 25mb of data just getting out of bed in the morning.
Enter XCom Global. They have done the arsing around on your behalf. All you need to do is hire the USB broadband stick or MiFi unit and pay them the fee ($14.95/day for the USB stick and $17.95/day for the Novatel Wireless MiFi unit).
Genius.
Granted, $17.95 will add up. But that’s proper use. Proper data use. Unlimited fair use. No stupid silly limits. If you’re going to America for 10 days and you want unlimited data, that’ll cost you $179.50 (if you’d like a MiFi) or $149.50 if you just want the USB stick. First let’s convert that into pounds. £125 and £104 respectively.
Let’s compare that with paying Vodafone for international roaming in the USA at their published rate of £3 per meg. Assume I end up using an average of 70mb per day, right? That would cost me £210 per day or £2,100 for the 10 day trip. Now the XCom rates look positively saintly.
Of course you could just buy a MiFi and buy a local sim card when you arrive in the States. But if you don’t want the hassle, do consider the XCom offer.
From June 1st Voda will charge £5 for 5mb so a big increase in charges!
Sent you a mail on this Ewan
think its a multi SIM offering, a new local SIM for every country you visit
Correct me if I am wrong
Ahh rubbish if that's the case, Pat! I thought someone had cracked the whole one-sim/one-deal-for-every-country :/
How's MAXroam international data doing these days?
Still Ewan, if you are going to a.n.other country for a number of days, and you are going to be using that amount of data (which I would say is any normal “Internet” user), you would want to look at something cheaper, like a local SIM, or a Maxroam SIM.
Looking at their Ts&Cs webpage (http://www.xcomglobal.com/terms/) they do seem to retain ownership of it completely, and they also look like they charge you for almost everything.
I’m agreeing with you on the high charges local operators will heap on you when roaming with data, but this service is still high priced.
According to one mention of their service on the Interwebs, it is multi-SIM, like Pat said:
“You choose the country where you’ll need service, and Xcom Global will provide the appropriate SIM card” (http://is.gd/cpJWX)
So, they charge you 17 quid a day, and make you carry around 21 SIMs, or worse, send you the SIM each time (“coz our delivery always gets there!”)
Nope, they don’t seem to have done enough arsing around to charge me 17 quid! 🙂
Bernard
(My thoughts are my own, not of my employer, etc)
You are kidding right?
$179 for 10 days data access? And its a rental fee? So presumably you don't actually own the equipment?
$15 a day for unlimited data? Sorry but that is an outrageous price. For $15 a day they would want to write the e-mails, look at the webpages, talk on the Skype calls for me! 🙂
I go to the UK weekly. I bought a pre-paid SIM from a well-known operator. I pay 1 pound, that's $1.44181, and I get on average 170-250Kbps unlimited. ALL DAY. 7 days, 7 pounds.
Even with the hassle of carrying 2 or 3 sims, that hassle is worth not paying $15 per day for “unlimited” data.
Leaving aside they is no mention of what download speeds they offer.
Sorry for the rant, but this is definately not value for money.
Ah, you *are* kidding. 😉
Bernard
(My thoughts are my own, not of my employer, etc)
What about the example I quoted, Bernard?
standby, sent you a tester email, did you get it?
No, weirdly — where did you send it? I don't see anything in the spam filter either?
Looks like my original reply comment was not approved, or got lost?
Sorry, no I was just in meetings Bernard and since you don't have a disqus account and you didn't use Twitter/Facebook to authenticate, the system needs me to approve everything. Sorry!
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