Frequent travellers on UK operator 3 will be cheering today's news that the network is slashing its roaming charges if they're in Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Hong Kong or Australia (all of which are countries where 3 has a local operator too).
Of course, it's no consolation to anyone who's getting stung while roaming on other networks. And having spent the last week in Las Vegas trying desperately hard not to think about how much every call / text / data surf was costing me, I think further roaming cuts are going to be essential if Mobile 2.0 services are going to take off.
I'm a fairly heavy user of the Gmail Mobile application, for example, which I check several times a day when out and about, just to keep track of incoming emails. I also use a bunch of mobile internet sites for everything from news to entertainment plus I have the Vox Mobile client on my phone for moblogging. Yes, I know I sound like the worst kind of Nathan Barley by saying all this...
But anyway, my usage of all of these was dramatically lower last week, purely for fear of what the bill might look like at the end of the month. Yet I still wanted to use them. I'm not sure whether the answer is lower data roaming charges (which'd be nice), or more use of Wi-Fi or what. But the fact remains that a lot of people who will be the early adopters of these Mobile 2.0 services are also frequent business travellers, so it'll become an issue.
Of course, when the oil runs out and we can't travel for business or pleasure, it'll be a moot point. But that's another post ;o)