Since December 2007 the following options are available:

From the website:

"...we now offer Mobile Broadband on Pay As You Go! So if you don't want a contract, you don't have to have one - the choice is yours. And better still, we don't charge you any more for the service as a Pay As You Go customer – it's still just £10 for 1GB of data, and you have 30 days in which to use it."

The offers in this package:

• Broadband Lite: 1 GB/month, 10 pounds
• Broadband Plus 3 GB/month, 15 pounds
• Broadband Max: 7 GB/month, 25 pounds

Further information:

• Network Coverage

• Here's a link to the 'Get Started Guide' for Interent Access with Pay As You Go SIMs. Among other things the PDF file behind the link explains how to activate one of the broadband offers above via 3's online portal.

• Here's a report of how to activate one of the offers in practice and ignore warnings from shop assistants that it won't work with non-'3' phones.

• APN: three.co.uk (in case the phone doesn't configure itself automatically. Tested the APN with the 10GB offer in April 2008)

• Store locator
  
• It looks like they are not blocking applications. My IPSec VPN works as well as Yahoo messenger and voice calls via the Skype PC client.

• 'Three' seems to have some bandwidth throtteling in place. Downlink speeds reach around 1 MBit/s (tested with a 3.6 MBit/s HSDPA modem in several locations and over several days) and the uplink is limited to 50-60 kbit/s. The uplink limit probably prevents use ofmost VoIP software except for Skype, which uses around 30 kbit/s in uplink if it detects that more is not available. (April 2008)

Internet access limited to use from handset:

• Internet Daily £0.50
• Internet Weekly £2.50
• Internet Monthly £5.00

These offers are described here (December 2007).

Call 444 to activate

3 Like Home

When you roam using 3 networks in Austria, Hong Kong, Ireland and Italy, you can use your 3 mobile to call or text home for the same price as in the UK. This applies to your data bundles too. Personally tested this with my 3 UK SIM card in Italy. Here is a report.