MOBILE OPERATOR 3 has introduced the first “all you can eat” data price plan for smartphone users, which it says ensures that there is no “out of bundle” data charges.

The Flex Max tariffs cost from €35 to €95 a month, depending on the number of bundled voice minutes and texts, but all the plans come with unlimited data.

The operator said customers would not be charged for additional data or removed from the service, regardless of how much data they use in a month.

“There is no fair usage policy,” said Eoin MacManus, commercial director at 3.

However, the network says it “reserves the right to employ network management techniques, if required, to ensure optimal service to all customers”.

Mr MacManus said this right will be exercised if customers use more than 15 gigabytes (Gbytes) of data a month. At that point, customers may see their network speeds and bandwidth curtailed.

Mr MacManus said it was hoping to attract existing smartphone users from other networks to the tariffs as well as getting customers to sign up who do not already use a device such as Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy S.

Other networks cap the amount of data that can be used each month before additional costs are incurred.

Mr MacManus said the trend both in Ireland and internationally has been to reduce the amount of data included in plans.

He said 2Gbytes had been standard when other operators first launched smartphone plans, but on many tariffs this had now been reduced to 1GByte or even to 500Megabytes.

“People want to use their phones for YouTube, social netwoking and as a sat nav, but there is a fear of going outside the data bundle,” said Mr MacManus.

“We want to buck that trend because we don’t believe its what people want.”