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Rogers & Roaming: Working To Make It Easier
March 19th, 2010 a 12:38pm
With the arrival of warmer weather, you may be starting to make your Spring or Summer travel plans. If you’re like us, you’ll probably be packing a smartphone or other mobile device to keep connected with friends, family and yes, even work.
Historically this has been hard to do affordably, regardless of your carrier. You may have resorted to switching data off, or using only Wi-Fi or pay phones to keep costs down. But as part of Rogers’ efforts to make it easier for you to do business with us, we’re working with our roaming partners to bring down roaming fees and we’re also designing new offers and options to better fit your needs while roaming. Here’s a rundown of some of the new ideas we’ve introduced to make roaming more affordable.
New One Rate Plans
A few weeks ago, Rogers unveiled One Rate data roaming plans. These new plans offer frequent travellers to the U.S. the ability to draw from the same data bucket in both Canada and the U.S. For about $10 more a month than equivalent domestic plans, frequent U.S. business and leisure travellers can get cost certainty and big savings. It’s not available for all our plans, but you can find more details at www.rogers.com/onerateroaming.
Travel Packs
Less frequent travellers should go with a travel pack, which provides significant savings over standard text messaging, voice and data roaming rates. You can add U.S. or international packs by contacting Customer Care or through the My Rogers section on Rogers.com. Go to www.rogers.com/roaming for travel pack info.
Add-Ons
Some of you (particularly our iPhone customers) have told us you don’t want to switch plans to get better roaming rates. The best option for you is the U.S Data Roaming Option. A $10 recurring monthly fee allows you to roam in the States at the rate of $1/MB, the equivalent of roughly 50 text e-mails. Data usage can also vary by device – see the travel tips section of the link above for more useful info. You can also check out the data calculator at www.rogers.com/datacalculator.
We’re excited to provide One Rate’s pioneering low rates and convenience, along with the widest range of roaming options available to Canadians. But we recognize there’s more work to do.
Our goal is to make wireless roaming easier and more cost effective for all our customers. Here are a few things we’ve done to make that happen:
- Since last year, our customers receive an SMS once they’re roaming in a foreign country and get directed to some of the packs above to save money.
- Our site has a travel tips section to educate customers about roaming
- Clearer representation on your monthly invoice to better manage and understand your roaming usage
Looking ahead, we are working with partners around the world to find other ways to bring savings to our customers. So stay tuned – and bon voyage!
Rob Manne is a regular contributor to RedBoard.
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I’ve used the “Add-on” in the past but was not impressed to see it was re-occurring until I called to remove it. Rogers still doesn’t seem to offer something for me when I want to go on a 1 or 2 week vacation to the states. I Want something cheap and easy that expires as my vacation does. Charge me $10/month and let me use my phone as I normally would if I were roaming in Canada.. My iPhone is great but only when I’m in Canada. Once I’m in the US it becomes a dangerous piece of equipment that could put me in the poor house.
Good to hear from you, Chris. Some good feedback. Have you tried a data travel pack? You can buy a bulk amount that’s good for one month and then expires so you’re not billed again. Check it out under http://www.rogers.com/roaming > U.S. or International > Data Roaming.
I have a hard time justifying $1/MB let alone $2 or $3.. I think you’d still make money at $0.25/MB. Obviously as long as people are willing to pay the higher prices thats what I’ll be stuck with..
With the One Rate plan do you also pay the additional $1/MB or is it just a flat fee of $10 per month.
Also, if you find that you don’t end up travelling as much can you cancel the One Rate plan and go back to just Canada?
Hi Sasa. With One Rate it’s a flat monthly fee and there shouldn’t be additional data charges in the U.S., provided you stay within your bucket. If you don’t think you’ll be travelling to the U.S. regularly and think you’d switch back to a Canadian plan, I’d recommend some of the other options I mentioned in the post.
Personally, I love the new One Rate data plans. I travel to the US frequently (about 4 times a month down to Seattle). It’s great that I don’t have to be a wifi wanderer or pay expensive roaming fees. However, it would be great if there could be voice One Rate plans to complement the data ones. I hope that is classified under “we are working with partners around the world to find other ways to bring savings to our customers!”
Btw, J’aime la petite partie française (Bon voyage) à la fin! I love the little French part (Bon voyage) at the end!
Really appreciate the feedback, Erick. I’ll pass along your One Rate voice plan suggestions to the équipe here. :)
These rates are still crap, get with the times Rogers, or are you just trying to milk every last penny you can until the competition comes to market?
Hey Chris, we recognize there’s more work to do. Roaming rates are trickier than domestic rates in that we have to negotiate with partners around the world.
That said, we’ve made roaming a priority and we’re confident we’ve got some of the best roaming rates and options for our customers in Canada.
Hi,
I would like to know if the One Rate data roaming plans can be add to the 100$ family plan with shared data. I have called the customer service and they were not able to find the option.
Thanks in advance.
Hey Joey, it can’t be added on because it’s a separate plan. Another option is to get the $10/month data add-on, and then designate the family member who will use it. If you travel to the U.S. less frequently, I’d recommend getting a travel pack before you go, which is good for one month. Hope that helps.
The real issue here isn’t offering better plans for roaming but rather unlock devices so they can be used with other networks. That way I can put in another carriers SIM into my phone while I’m down in the U.S. and not pay Rogers these fees. So when is Rogers going to offer unlocked cellphones for there customers? Why hasn’t this already happened?
Hi Dave, our phones are certified to ensure optimal customer experience. With unlocked devices, we can’t guarantee how that device will function on our network.
I’m no expert but I doubt that phones couldn’t be certified as well as sim unlocked.
That’s really the end-users’ problem. I think plenty of customers would happily take an unlock code if you provided them with a disclaimer about potential problems, and maybe even voided parts of their customer service.
The (officially) unlocked version of a phone that you offer in a locked offering functions identically to it’s locked counterpart. Lets not kid ourselves here, phones are locked because the carrier subsidizes the purchase price, hence the need to lock into a contract. Don’t try and pretend that one phone functions better because it’s locked. While some methods of unlocking phones may cause deteriorated functionality (read: jailbroken iPhone), most simply function they way they were intended.
Any unlocked cell phone thats works on Rogers network will be just fine, there is no loss of customer experience, the only loss is the roaming fees, I use my unlocked blackberry in the states with one of their pay as you go sim cards and it work fine. But eventually Rogers will have to stop with all the excuses and just offer North America Data Roaming as a FREE Standard Feature that is included.
Rob keep up the great job and its a shame that we dont keep in touch anymore, I was looking forward to working with your department, oh well maybe one day.
Just my 2 cents
http://www.twitter.com/TorontoWireless
Why only for US ? I’m travelling waayyy more often to Europe than US … Is there any plan to offer the same kind of plan for Europe ? Thanks !
I would like to see OneRate as a premium Travel Pack – I’d pay $15-$20 or so as a one-time fee to be able to tap into my home data bucket for a business trip. The Travel Packs are still exorbitantly priced – I have spent many a trip to the U.S. cruising solely on Wi-Fi, even with the Travel Pack option.
iPhone users get screwed again! I will write a letter to apple indicating that even though I love the device this latest stunt By Rogers has forced me to walk away from the iPhone in the future. I ‘m very disappointed!