#ripoffroaming

Dennis Howlett has started a new tag on Twitter about the atrocious cost of international mobile voice and data roaming.

I have added extracts from some of my tweets below.

Please add your own examples in comments below or at  Twitter – and your creative workarounds to the problem. May be we can embarrass carriers (and folks like Apple which go along with locked SIM cards) and regulators all over the world to pay some attention:

• possible SkypeOut and Google Voice workarounds http://tinyurl.com/mm5da2
• why is EU capping intra-european roaming but letting US telcos continue with ripoff in its domain http://tinyurl.com/nmc6te
•  a 3 min Youtube video on ATT in Europe sets you back $ 40. Rogers for my canadian friends > $ 70!! http://tinyurl.com/mmgrc7
•  costs US companies almost $ 700 per intl trip http://tinyurl.com/mwu48a

Comments

[Josh Greenbaum]

How about this: Sprint offers service in Ontario. But if you're a US customer, you have to roam. Base price: 60 cents/minute!!!! Yep. Not to fear, they have a plan: buy the Canada roaming plan at $2.99/month, and the price goes down to 20 cents/minute. Okay, better, but still ridiculous. And wait, there's more: Sprint pro-rates the plan charges, so you can sign up before your trip, and cancel afterward. So, a week's trip costs you pennies in plan fees. Which begs the question: why bother with the plan at all? Answer: Sprint's too stupid to realize how stupid this looks. And, anyway, even 20 cents/minute is so 20th-century...