Anyone who has used a cell phone has heard of the dreaded roaming ‘tax’ providers tack onto the use of your device outside your ‘home’ area. The definition of what was ‘home’ depended on your particular plan. Outside of that area, whether it be your region or your country, you faced some pretty stiff fees for usage. Historically, rates were exorbitant, if not extortionary, with additional charges quickly adding up to hundreds, if not thousands. This became is distinctly thorny issue with the advent of smartphones, that even if left on, without the proper precautions, would rack up data roaming charges like there was no tomorrow.
Everyone, except the providers, agreed that these charges were nothing less than heinous and billed out at ridiculous multiples compared to the actual wholesale rates the providers paid to their counterparts for using their networks, but complaints and public outcry fell on deaf ears. But in the last couple of years, the draconian practice of roaming charges has begun to break down. More recently noted by today’s announcement that T-Mobile was eliminating the practice for customers using their phones outside of the U.S. in both Canada and Mexico. Good news for not only travellers, but for U.S. residents doing business across North America or living on the other side of the American border. This change is slated to take effect Wednesday.
T-Mobile’s decision comes on the heels of the European Union announcing that it would eliminate roaming charges across its member states by 2017, but it stipulated that this roaming charge freedom was limited to a ‘fair use policy’ meaning that only regular travel would be exempt and any abuse of that would be subject to charge. It did state however that rates could be any more than what the provider would be paying wholesale for using its counterpart’s network.
The same abolishment has occurred in the southern states of India and it seems that the reformation of roaming charges is building momentum with the CRTC, back in May, capping the roaming rates that Rogers, Telus and Bell can bill to smaller independents to use their networks. This will not only see a decrease in roaming charges to clients of these smaller players, but will also foster competition which will hopefully lead to lower rates in general. Especially good news as Canada pays some of the highest wireless rates among industrialized countries.
The big providers are stepping up to counter their earlier roaming dynasty with more reasonable roaming package plans that bill approximately $5.0 a day for the privilege of using their services in the U.S., of course if you breach the limits of this plan, get ready to pay through the nose, but there are alerts that will let you know once you getting close to line. There are also third-party services like Knowroaming that provide proprietary SIM cards that you can use while travelling that greatly reduce rates to $0.09/minute to call landline or cells in the U.S. as well as $0.11 per SMS send and $0.10/Mb for data. However, you need to get your phone unlocked to take advantage of the service. This procedure once frowned upon by providers and illegal, has become a right in Canada since 2013 and also in the U.S. when Obama signed it into law last year.
Is this the end of roaming? Probably not entirely as there are costs incurred when your provider has to use another network, so rightfully those costs should be passed on, but the highway robbery that once took place is finally coming to an end. Now if we can only get the monthly rates to be more reasonable…
