Mobile coverage when travelling by Air or Sea:

As you may be aware, recent articles circulating in the news and social media highlighting the potential risks of not switching off your mobile device or enabling ‘Flight Mode’ whilst travelling by air or sea. On the back of this, we felt it important to remind clients how utilising air and sea satellite services whilst travelling differs from conventional roaming.

Here are some key points worth keeping in mind and sharing with your friends before they travel:

• A mobile device can connect to some satellite network services, where the service is made available via air and maritime travel companies, automatically. There will be no authorisation required from the end user to connect.
• When the device is not switched off, or placed in flight mode, mobile device applications can consistently update and run in the background, using data services without your knowledge, even if the device is stored away.
• Roaming spend on satellite roaming services is not considered the same as mobile network roaming, it is not included within standard roaming bundles or services. In addition, out of bundle costs are in most cases significantly higher than standard roaming costs by destinations within set world zones, even seconds and lead to a hugely inflated mobile phone bill.
• The EU spend cap of €50 does not cover these Air or Sea services at all. However, the Worldwide Data Cap covering data consumption in excess of £50 does, where you have opted in to this.

If you need further information or clarification on what is covered and what is not please don't hesitate to contact support where we can help.