3 Hong Kong, the mobile arm of Hutchison Telecommunications Hong Kong Holdings (HTHKH), has launched today a new data roaming service, called Roam-in-Command, providing discounted data roaming plans for mobile subscribers traveling 21 countries in three continents.
3 HK’s new Roam-in-Command service comes with four packages. Each pack provides customers with up to 14 days discounted data roaming service in six European countries and 10 countries throughout Asia Pacific. One package combines the US and Canada, while another pack targets travelers to three Greater China destinations – mainland China, Taiwan and Macau.
The service offers four 200MB (at HK$78) or 1GB (HK$198) options to serve customers roaming in Europe, Asia Pacific, the US, Canada and Greater China.
Customers can also get an extra 1GB roaming data capacity if they subscribe to the 1GB service during the promotional period, from tomorrow to 30 September.
Kenny Koo, 3 Hong Kong’s director of roaming and service development, said the company is drawing on its advantage of close ties with the 3 Group, NTT Docomo, the Conexus Mobile Alliance and Vodafone to tailor “value-for-money” roaming packages that offer extensive overseas coverage.
“The upshot is our customers can wave goodbye to the hassle of changing SIM cards or carrying Wi-Fi devices just to stay connected with friends and family while abroad,” the executive said at a media briefing Thursday.
The new service launch comes at a time when Hong Kong mobile carriers are seeing decline in roaming revenues, thanks to increasing competition from OTT messaging applications like Whatsapp, Line and Wechat.
Hutchison Telecom reported HK$3.9 billion of mobile service revenue in 2016, down 3.9% from a year earlier, largely due to the decline in roaming revenue – which slumped 13% from HK$831 million in 2015 to HK$722 million last year. The company will report its 2017 interim financial results next week.
Koo said the data roaming market is changing rapidly, and that he expects that the new service, together with other data roaming plans currently offered by the company, will help drive roaming traffic.