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Mobile Phone Roaming Costs: Out Of Control
Thursday, April 10, 2008
I am thankful that I work for an employer that, when they do ask me to travel outside the United States, they pay my mobile phone bill, no questions asked. Not everyone's in that situation. In fact, I'm going to be indirectly in that situation when my wife goes to Italy next year.
International roaming rates are expensive. The U.S. carriers charge a minimum of $0.99 per minute to make or receive a call while you're abroad. If there's long distance involved, heaven help you. It's somewhat less egregious roaming in Canada--$0.69 per minute on AT&T--but only somewhat.
There was a time where this was a problem within the United States. Back in the early days of mobile telephony in the United States, if you went out of your local calling area--and the calling areas were relatively small in those days--expect to be hit with roaming charges--making or receiving calls. Assuming it even worked.
In the late 1990s, AT&T Wireless--not the current iteration of this company--changed the game with their Digital One Rate plans. 450 nationwide anytime minutes for $60--anywhere in the United States. It was a game-changer. Pretty soon, all the carriers went with national rate plans. Roaming charges--within the borders of the United States, anyway, were a thing of the past.
The European Union has been doing stuff to curtail roaming charges within the EU. While this is great, it only applies to people who have service with a carrier within the EU. Everyone else--including us Americans--will continue to be charged exorbitant rates.
What's a world traveler to do? Assuming you already have a compatible GSM phone, there are essentially three choices for dealing with this:
- Paying the exorbitant roaming rates, which if you're only going to be in a country for a day or so, might be the easiest option.
- Get a local SIM card in the country you're in. This may be difficult to set up beforehand, but it might be something you could do once you land at your destination. Either that or have a local in that country send you the appropriate SIM card.
- Get one of these "global" SIMs from companies like MaxRoam, United Mobile, and Universal Mobile. These companies are virtual network operators that aggregate access to a number of different GSM networks worldwide. They also use VoIP and callbacks to reduce the overall cost of the call and give you inbound numbers in many different countries.
Of course, the problem with #2 and #3 is that you have to give your contacts a different phone number or simply forward your cell phone to the new number. If you don't have a GSM handset, you've also have to acquire one of those.
Note that you can't simply use one of these global SIMs in the U.S. because they are passing exorbitant roaming charges they pay onto you. However, that seems to be a short-term problem.
In short, roaming internationally sucks. There are ways to lessen the pain, but it's still more expensive than it needs to be.
