You know what really boils my peanuts? I can't take a trip anywhere without being
charged where the sun don't shine with roaming fees. Even though calling home
or sending a text is an incredibly trivial matter from a technical
perspective. I mean, I can hop on Facebook Messenger right now and have a
voice conversation with my homeboy in Italy for absolutely no additional
charge, zero. But, if I flew to Rome and
tried to use my data connection, I'd get a bill that might make my mortgage
payment look like chump change. Seriously, years ago a guy traveling to
Mexico on business got a bill of over 275
thousand dollars just for streaming a hockey game. What possible reason could
your carrier have for charging so much?
Okay, so get this. Even though the bill you get might have the name of your home
wireless carrier on it, the responsibility for this kind of price
gouging ultimately lies with whatever foreign carrier owns the network that
you were using. And it used to be the case that the logistics of providing
roaming service were a little more difficult for mobile carriers. During
the earlier part of the 2000s, it was difficult for them to track just how
many minutes or how much data was being used as communication between networks
wasn't very good. So, these logistical issues made it a lot more tempting for
mobile carriers to try and recoup any losses by jacking up prices. But these
days, improvements in technology have made it such that it's really easy for
mobile networks in Australia to talk to one in the US for example when someone
travels between the two countries. So, why are we still paying so much?
Part of the issue is the way deals are done between providers from different
countries. You see, if you use a major carrier in your home country, they
probably have dozens or even hundreds of contracts in place with foreign
providers. These are all negotiated individually and although it doesn't
cost very much more to connect a call across the world than it does in the
same city, foreign carriers have no incentive to charge reasonable prices to
folks who are roaming. And the home carrier doesn't want to make it super
cheap to roam on their own networks as a foreign carrier could then swoop in and
undercut them, potentially siphoning off local customers. For example, if a US
carrier was able to offer extremely cheap roaming across the border in
Canada, a Canadian user might just buy a
US cell service and permanently roam in Canada on a Canadian company's cell
towers. Making matters worse, many countries only have a very small handful
of major carriers servicing them. Think about how the US mobile market is
essentially a four-way dance between Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile.
This means that when a carrier picks an out-of-country roaming partner, they may
only have one or two choices, making it difficult to negotiate a good deal for
the home country's customers. And unlike at home where you can pick between at
least two or three providers, you're just going to automatically connect to
whoever the foreign partner network is when your plane lands abroad. So,
there's no consumer choice when you're roaming overseas. The result is that
your home carrier gets charged a huge amount for access to the foreign network
even though the actual cost that the foreign carrier has to bear isn't very
high. And of course, that gets passed on to us, the hapless
consumers. And because carriers view international roaming as a luxury that's
more often used by business customers who will just have their company foot
the bill, it's hard to see them cutting us a break anytime soon. Now, of course,
there are certain ways around this. If you have access to Wi-Fi where you're
going, you could just make voice over IP calls over like WhatsApp or the
aforementioned Facebook Messenger. Or you could offer buying a local or
traveler SIM card or even a cheap pay-as-you-go phone. Alternatively, many
major carriers offer temporary travel packages that will give you limited
access overseas at much more reasonable rates. And in all cases, you're trading
in the convenience of having your phone simply work as soon as you get through
customs for not having to pay a freaking kidney just to check Twitter.
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