Listing of Countries with Free 3G and 3G browsing enabled - UPDATED

The earlier June 2010 listing (seen near the bottom) is modified when new information is put online in connection with 3G Kindle experimental web browsing availability globally.

  The slow but free e-Ink web browser has been fully enabled in some areas of the world for the last 4+ years, beginning with the first Kindle, although the browser has been improved quite a bit since then.

  See the older original blog article for other details but, much better, the UPDATED blog article that includes a Table of Countries that are enabled for 3G browsing, placed online by Amazon-UK. (Oct. 2010, updated 2011).

JUNE 2010 STATUS
  1. As of June 2010, on Amazon's country-specific product pages, all the countries which are not showing brackets below are described as no longer having the web-browser 'UNavailable' for Kindles bought for use in those countries.  They became enabled when the new international models were made available and, probably, lower-cost arrangements were made with 3G carriers in those countries.  Only subscriptions to blogs were unavailable (in June 2010) as they have generally been for the International Kindles all along.

  So, these are the countries whose current product pages showed full free web-browser access then rather than "only" Wikipedia as of June 2010.   Updates were made to the list, for countries added later.

  Many don't realize that almost wherever there is the 3G feature for downloading of Kindle books from Amazon, there is free 3G access to Wikipedia, straight from any page of a book being read (although this is only in English).

  The Kindle is very good for students of any age.  This is a unique feature but then so is the free 3G Web lookup in general, internationally.

  2. There were several countries whose then-current product pages as of June 2010 in the "Live Outside the U.S.?" countries-table at the Kindle International page described their available features as not including the experimental Basic Web browser.

Confusion for a few months
  UPDATED - However, there were, for a short time, regular reports here and at Kindle forums that these customers WERE getting full access, most of this after the latest Kindle 2 and Kindle DX v2.5 software had been installed, a few others before.
  Then the 3G web browsing became UNavailable to many in those countries again.  This caused some consternation on the forums.

  Amazon U.S. has managed to remain very unspecific about these countries (shown in brackets below) possibly because they're responsible for continuing negotiation of lower-cost agreements with 3G carriers that would allow Amazon to offer the free 3G web browsing in those areas

  The Amazon product pages for country features which might eventually show full web-browser availability someday for those countries but which have NOT ever had officially enabled web-browsing are:
Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden

  As mentioned, customers in those countries WERE, briefly, reporting full access after the v2.5.x updates.  Again, these countries are shown in brackets below until their Amazon product pages ever show them definitely included, depending on Agreements reached by Amazon with cellular wireless providers in their areas.  As mentioned, most of those countries lost the 3G Web browsing capability in those countries after a brief availability in June-July 2010 when some new international Kindle models apparently had the wrong settings.

  I hoped to get more definite information on this and did quote in a forum post, with permission, a reply from Amazon's Executive Customer Relations about Germany and the Netherlands, which was still not entirely clear, unfortunately, even then.

  You can read that reply from Amazon's ECR in the follow-up blog article October 29, 2010 .

  It remains unclear what the 3G web browsing availability in those countries are, but as of August 2011, they are still not listed on the Table of Countries with 3G Web Browsing Enabled for residents.

*UPDATE OCTOBER 28, 2010* - The Amazon UK pages are more forthcoming though.
  See the TABLE of 61 countries at http://amzn.to/uk-3gwebwhere for which Amazon UK says currently (10/28/10), "Access to other websites while travelling abroad is available via a 3G connection in the 61 countries listed below (on that linked Amazon-UK page).

  I've included that table in the latest blog article on 3G web browsing internationally, and I check the table regularly for any changes.

HISTORY OF CHANGES THAT HAD CONFUSED CUSTOMERS - as blogged.
  In June-July 2010 we received at least temporary full-web-access confirmations from:
    Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy,the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Thailand, Scotland, and the UK before some residents reported losing the availability in those countries.

The countries with *brackets* below are the ones for which 3G web browsing
has always been largely UNavailable with the product pages specifically saying so for long periods of time but receiving more vague statements starting August 2010 on the Amazon-U.S. product pages.

The ones with "= {country} =" are considered enabled for 3G web browsing but were added after the June listing.

Albania
Argentina
Aruba
Australia
  [Austria]
Bahamas
Barbados
Bermuda
  =Bolivia=
Brazil
  =Bulgaria=
Canada
Cayman Islands
Chile
Columbia
Croatia
Czech Republic
  [Denmark]
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
  [France]
  [Germany]
Grenada
  [Greece]
Guam
Guatemala
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hong Kong *
  =Hungary=
Iceland
India
Ireland
Italy --- (Not on Amazon-UK listing)
Jamaica
Japan *
Kenya
Liechtenstein
Macedonia
Mexico *
Montserrat
  [Netherlands]
Nicaragua
Norway
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
  [Portugal]
Puerto Rico
Romania
  =Russia=
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Scotland --- (Not on Amazon-UK listing separately, part of UK)
  =Slovakia=
Slovenia
  =South Africa=
  [Spain]
  [Sweden]
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
UK
Ukraine
United States *
Uruguay
US Virgin Islands
Venzuela

[] These marked with brackets are are countries from which Kindle owners reported briefly that their Kindles were working with full web access especially after initial software v2.5.x updates, but with Amazon Kindle product pages for them still saying that the experimental web browser was not available there.  For the most part, the 3G web browsing was disabled in those areas after a few weeks.

  - (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden).
  As mentioned twice above, availability for most residents in those countries was lost afterward, although they can use their Kindle's 3G browser in other countries as reported in Page 3 of this Amazon Kindle forum thread, about international 3G web browsing, in a report by T'Mara

* This region, asterisked, was one of 4 enabled for use of the Basic Web-browser when the Kindle Int'l/Global was first released.  There are at least 52 more countries added if this is not an error in the server countries-table information and 9 more (with product pages not updated) to be added (for a total 61 newer), judging from Kindle owner reports.

There are reports of slowness, of course, and that's true here too.
I have some tips on ways to speed up the sessions. That's at the updated MobiWeb article and, with it, a downloadable file of mobile-device-optimized pages to use with the various Kindle models.


Last updated August 2011


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($139)   DX Graphite

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.


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