A few days back, I wrote a post lamenting the demise of the Fido 35¢ US roaming plan that one had with City Fido on Microcell, before they were acquired by Rogers after receiving a text from Rogers informing me that US roaming would now cost me $1.45 a minute, but that there were discount packages available to me that I could add onto my current plan for US Roaming.
A review of the Rogers website yielded this information:
These are business prices, I currently have a business plan with my BlackBerry, so have a look at the Rogers Website for the personal plans
| Fee | Minutes | Unit Cost | Overage |
|---|---|---|---|
| $40 | 60 | 67¢ | 95¢ |
| $60 | 120 | 50¢ | |
| $75 | 240 | 31¢ | |
| $120 | 480 | 25¢ | |
| $170 | 720 | 24¢ | |
| $320 | 1,440 | 22¢ | 50¢ |
Looking at the per minute cost, it is scaled an exponentially reducing curve, so for $60, you get twice as many roaming minutes as for $40. This does save money, however, you need to bear in mind that you will only effectively pay the lower per minute rate as calculated above, if you use exactly the number of minutes that you are buying, i.e., no overage and also no underage.
If you pay $60, and only use 20 roaming minutes, you are effectively paying $3 per minute for your US roaming minutes, which is even more than the $1.45 that Rogers will take you for with no add-on. Also bear in mind that you are paying a monthly fee here, so you have to consistently be using those roaming minutes at that level. It irritates me when operators use this style of pricing – sure it drives their ARPUs (Average Revenue Per User) up – but it sure is not good nor even honest customer service in my opinion.
At least they are not adding long distance charges to these roaming minutes, however they are also not clear if these minutes would be deducted from your in-plan bundled minutes – I would bet yes, they would be:
Excludes long distance charges associated with calls placed in the United States which terminate outside of North America (U.S. and Canada) and calls to special numbers (911, 411, 1-800, etc.)
And then, why would they not give you 911 for free, heck that is just almost the primary purpose of a phone, let people call 911 and pick up the tab!
There is definitely room for another GSM/UMTS player in the Canadian market to introduce some healthy competition.
