TRAVELLERS can now pay a flat fee to read e-mail messages on their cellphones and Blackberry mobile devices while overseas, instead of being hit with a giant bill following a trip overseas.

SingTel and its Bridge Alliance group of Asian telecom operators yesterday launched a flat-fee data roaming service across 11 territories, promising lower costs for people toting their cellphones abroad.

Separately, MobileOne (M1) began offering a discounted per-megabyte rate for roaming in more than 50 selected countries and territories nearly two years ago.

SingTel customers are charged a flat $48 a month now to download 15 megabytes (MB) of data while overseas - equivalent to 300 e-mail messages or 150 webpages. This can help users to cut costs by up to 90 per cent.

Customers of another 10 operators including those in Malaysia, Hong Kong and India can also log on to SingTel's network at similar rates.

Additional usage is charged at prevailing rates, which can be about $24 a megabyte, when a user is roaming in Hong Kong, for example.

But Bridge Alliance chairman Lim Chuan Poh said most users chalk up less than 5MB of data.

Mr Lim, who is also SingTel's chief executive officer for international, added that flat-rate pricing makes it easy for people to gauge how much they might spend overseas. He said voice calls may also attract such discounts in future.

In most cases now, a user is charged a roaming fee for logging on as a 'guest' of an overseas mobile network on top of the usual charges for a call or download.

But telco operators have been thinking about how to get more users on board.

European mobile giant Vodafone, for example, has signed up over 12 million customers for its Passport service, which levies the local rate for calls made during overseas travel.

Meanwhile, M1 customers can go for a discounted rate of $10 to $25 a megabyte for roaming in selected countries and territories.

Regardless of the telco used here, customers have to set their phones so that they log on to the overseas telco which has the tie-up with their home-based one. If they log on to a rival operator, they may not get the discounts.

SingTel and M1 have the list of overseas telcos on their websites.

Research director Foong King Yew from analyst firm Gartner said prices can fall further, but 'you can still incur hefty charges if you download large e-mail attachments while travelling'.