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Hopefully this will peer-pressure US carriers to follow suit.
by eitally 11y ago
Hopefully this will peer-pressure US carriers to follow suit.
- Delmania 11y agoUnlikely, if anything, the US carriers will double down on roaming fees. They tend to do whatever it takes to prevent becoming what the European carriers have become, just a line supplier.
- PythonicAlpha 11y agoI do not know, how the US carriers fare, but the "just line suppliers" of Europe and particularly of Germany are faring very, very well! They still make tons of money for sometimes lowest-level service. Of course, when you have much, you still can fare better and make even more profits ...
- rconti 11y agoSeems like the very existence of roaming fees indicates that the European carriers were behaving very much like US carriers. Why would US carriers double down on roaming fees? I don't see how it's in any way related to this.
- dmishe 11y agoThere are no roaming charges inside of US, are there?
- Maultasche 11y agoThere are no rules against roaming charges, so it depends on the plan. I believe that most plans don't have roaming charges within the United States. Mine certainly doesn't. It's hard to have a competitive plan that has roaming charges. Roaming charges outside the United States can be quite high. I have to watch carefully who I'm connected to when I'm near the Canadian border.
- aeorgnoieang 11y agoThere are; outside of each carrier's coverage. Tho some carriers don't have roaming charges.
- ghaff 11y agoThere can be roaming charges and roaming data caps inside the US although they're not very common with the major carriers. The only time I've specifically encountered a cap with AT&T (I have a grandfathered "unlimited" plan) was when I was in Furnace Creek in Death Valley. (For those not familiar, Furnace Creek is quite isolated but it did get cell phone service a few years back.) As others have said, international roaming is very expensive without a specific plan. I left early on a trip to Europe last winter because of a snowstorm and before I knew it I had a big bill because I had used my phone in Toronto airport and my roaming service wasn't scheduled to begin for a couple of days. Fortunately, AT&T moved the start time for the international service earlier for me.
- Steko 11y agoAFAIK AT&T always lets you buy International plan add ons back to beginning of the current bill cycle. Still a rip. T-Mobile has 'free international data' but it's 2G speeds (capped at 128 kbps) and the upsell is a rip, $50 for half a GB.
- ghaff 11y agoAT&T's system for international add-ons on their site is a lot better than it used to be when you had to explicitly cancel the plan over the phone when you got back home. I'm happy enough with their offerings. I suppose there are circumstances where I'd just buy a SIM card for my old phone when I arrived at the airport, but for most purposes I'm fine with paying $30 for 120MB or whatever it is. It's no hassle and serves my purposes for a week of travel or so.
- hedgehog 11y agoI used the T-Mobile roaming data for a two month trip this year and was really happy with it. It may not be fast but it's pretty useful to have messaging, VOIP, and maps ready to go as soon as the plane lands.
- r00fus 11y agoIn France, TMO free international was phenomenally useful even at 128Kb/s. You can't stream video, but I was able to get some data in the most remote places.
- whoopdedo 11y agoIn the US you still get charged by the minute for "extended local area" on landline plans. So yeah, I'm not holding my breath.
- frandroid 11y agoWell, if you want to compare apples to apples, North American landline costs were/are waaaaayyyy cheaper than Europe's, which is what led to rapid and and widespread adoption of mobile on that continent in the first place.
- whoopdedo 11y agoWhat I was pointing out is there is a lot of inertia that would prevent any telephone company from changing the practice. Particularly since the consolidation of mobile carriers means most people rarely are in a roaming area.
- seszett 11y ago> Well, if you want to compare apples to apples, North American landline costs were/are waaaaayyyy cheaper than Europe's Wait... what? Bell used to charge me more for a basic landline in Montreal than I paid for 20Mpbs internet + free unlimited international calls + a hundred TV channels or so in France. The historical operator's plan for bare landline was cheaper as well. That was back in 2007 so maybe things have changed, but from my experience landline costs in Canada were hugely more expensive than in France. I actually ended up using my parents' VoIP account (provided on the aforementioned plan) to call Canadian lines most of the time because it was cheaper than using my phone. Perhaps generalising "North America" and "Europe" just doesn't work in this case, though.
- adventured 11y agoWho is paying roaming charges in the US on any of the major carriers? I've used both AT&T and Verizon and haven't had to worry about roaming charges for a decade.