One of the ways in which wireless costs get out of control within organizations is excessive roaming charges incurred while travelling. It is an easy oversight by companies and employees that has fattened the bottom line of the Big 3 Canadian wireless carriers for years. In 2013, roaming represented about $1.1 billion in revenue for Canadian carriers with 73% of voice roaming revenue and 54% of data revenue coming from the US according to the CRTC 2014 Communications Monitoring Report. With recent roaming announcements by Rogers and Roam Mobility, US roaming costs can be reduced significantly for businesses that take advantage of their offerings.
This week Rogers’ new Roam Like Home became available. For $5.00 a day it offers users on a Share Everything Plan, unlimited talk and text, and the ability to use part of their data bucket in America. From a Big Three Carrier, this is a great offering!
As an example, if you compare this to a TELUS Business Passport Essential 25, for $25 it offers 50 minutes of voice, 150 outgoing text messages and 50 MB of data. This is of course better than TELUS standard rates of $1.50 per minute, $.60 per text and $5.00 per MB or their Roam Ready plan where for $2/month the voice rate is $.35/minute. You will also pay $35 for 350 MB of data (but if you use 1 MB you also pay $35) and $10 for unlimited texts.
Bell published business plans are even less competitive. A talk and text plan with 100 minutes and up to 1,000 texts is $30/month and to add a separate data plan of 100 MB is $20/mth. Rogers caps its Roam Like Home monthly price at $50, the same price as Bell’s inferior voice and data packages combined.
This is not to say that all Rogers customers will be able to take advantage of the Roam Like Home offer. If the Big Three are not prepared to offer your business enhanced plans beyond those published there is a great new offer from Roam Mobility. For $19.95 per month you can get unlimited talk and text, and for $39.95 per month you get unlimited talk and text plus 2 GB of LTE data and unlimited 2 G data. Alternatively, for only $3.95 per day you can get unlimited talk and text in the US and Canada plus 400 MB of LTE data (and unlimited 2 G data). Long distance calls back to Canada are free. You need an unlocked phone and a Roam Mobility SIM card. The SIM card is $9.95.
The cost of unlocking your phone varies by wireless carrier. My Samsung Galaxy S4 to be unlocked would cost $50 by Rogers and Bell and $35 from TELUS. By going to MobileinCanada.com my phone unlocking would cost $20 from Rogers and TELUS and $35 from Bell.
The beauty of the Rogers Rome Like Home offering is it can be used with your existing SIM and phone number and it is easy to set-up. Just text “travel” to 222 to enroll.
Any plan is only good if you can take advantage of it. Your organization should have policies and practices in place to make sure that nasty bill shock from roaming doesn’t occur. That starts with monitoring, and even better, allocating your costs to the users. If you need assistance with roaming and wireless management solutions, we can help.
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