Remember when unlimited 3G web surfing was one of the major benefits to buying a 3G Kindle? It seems those days are over, at least for some users. One user of the US Kindle in Canada posted on MobileRead that he was recently informed that he’d reached a 50MB monthly cap on 3G browsing and would have 24 hours of grace before having to use wi-fi or wait for next month, apart from being able to access Amazon, Wikipedia, and the Kindle Store. Amazon apparently began enforcing this restriction as of July 1.

The story is getting some coverage in tech blogs, but one thing few of them seem to be making much of is the fact that this restriction actually seems to apply only to users outside the USA, such as the MobileRead poster in Canada. Apparently US 3G browsing still remains unrestricted—for the moment.

It’s not really too surprising Amazon would move to enforce this restriction. Even with its relatively primitive interface, 3G browsing for the life of the product could be expensive—especially outside the US where “roaming” presumably applies.

Of course, 3G browsing is only available at all on the older keyboard-based models of Kindle manufactured prior to last year. More recent models only permit browsing via wi-fi, period.

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