With new roaming plans, customers still vulnerable to extra charges: PIAC

Some of the incumbents' new and cheaper roaming plans offer small data packages that smartphone users will quickly exceed, incurring extra charges, said John Lawford, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. “You think you're at a decent rate, and then you quite quickly go over 50 MB. I think that's pretty easy to use in a day or two,” Lawford said in an phone interview. “If it goes to your regular roaming rate after you go over it, then it's an attractive nuisance, because you're going to get yourself into worse shape.” Lawford said Google Inc.'s Android and Apple Inc.'s iOS smartphones can use significant amounts of data through background applications, location services, apps providing mapping or weather information, and the downloading or uploading of photos and video. “With average use, and background applications, and the Android smartphones and iOS 7 doing all sorts of stuff back to home base, you don't see those background tasks,” Lawford said. “People who are even well-informed can't know all the things that are travelling back and forth.” BCE Inc. division Bell Mobility released a new roaming plan last month, after the CRTC said this summer that it was looking into wireless providers' roaming rates. Bell said it was cutting the cost of its monthly U.S. roaming package in half, from $50 to $25. That package, covering 30 days in the United States, includes 50 MB data usage, 50 minutes of calling, and 200 outgoing texts. According to its website, Bell charges $6 per megabyte for U.S. roaming outside a package. Similarly, Telus Corp.'s website says the company offers a 30-day U.S. roaming package for $25, which includes 50 minutes of calling, 150 texts, and 50 MB of data. Data overage fees are $1 per megabyte, Telus' website says, and the company also sells a 30-day data package for $40 for 100 MB. In May, Rogers Communications Inc. launched a new U.S. roaming package covering data usage, which is $8 per day for 50 MB per day. Calls are an additional $1.45 per minute and text messages are 75 cents each. Rogers, in a release announcing the new roaming rates, said that 50 MB of data represents about 1,000 emails, 50 map views, or 200 web pages on a mobile phone. New entrant Wind Mobile charges $1 per megabyte for U.S. roaming, 20 cents per minute for calling and 15 cents per text message. Customers can also purchase a $5-per-month “preferred roaming” add-on to receive U.S. roaming prices of 50 cents per megabyte for data, 10 cents per minute for calling, and 5 cents per text. Most providers, including Bell, Telus, and Rogers, now warn Canadian mobile users through text messages when they enter the United States and when they've exceeded their roaming package limits, a feature that Lawford said is important and helps prevent “bill shock.” Mobile providers filed confidential roaming rates and data with the CRTC in late September, following the regulator's request for the information. The commission said it requested the data after hearing concerns over the past year from consumers and new entrant carriers about high roaming fees. CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said in September that the regulator needed more information from providers to better understand the issue. He said he did not want to prejudge roaming rates and pricing and that he wanted to “start with asking the right questions, getting the evidence.” As part of their submissions, Bell and Telus said the CRTC lacks any legal foundation to regulate wireless carriers’ roaming agreements and retail pricing, though Wind Mobile has taken issue with that argument, saying the regulator has the jurisdiction. Lawford said it's difficult to know how much higher roaming pricing is than providers’ costs because the information is not public, though he said he suspects prices are too high. “The reduced rate is welcome, but we suspect it's still one to two orders of magnitude higher than costs,” Lawford said. “If you're charging them 100 times too much, and now only charging them 50 times too much, it's still too much.” He said he hopes to see the CRTC issue a public notice for a consultation on the regulation of retail or wholesale roaming rates. The CRTC, in its wireless consumer code regulation released this year, introduced a $50 cap on monthly data overage fees and a $100 cap on international data roaming charges. Consumers can opt out of the caps. BCE, in its publicly available roaming documents filed with the commission in late September, said it is inappropriate to consider the retail roaming prices and rates in isolation from the rest of the business. The company said wireless providers “make very large fixed investments” in their businesses, and recover those costs through “the total payments” made by customers. “As a result, our price for each individual element will sometimes differ from our competitors’ and there may be differences in the apparent profitability of the various elements of our service,” Bell said. “Such differences do not suggest unreasonable prices or ineffective competition in any area but rather are the product of a dynamic and complex competitive market.” Jennifer Kett, a spokeswoman for Rogers, said in an emailed statement that the company's 50 MB per-day roaming plan provides "nearly twice the data" that its customers typically use in Canada. Rogers launched the plan because "we know that cost and complexity of roaming rates are barriers to people using their phones while travelling in the same way that they do at home," Kett said. Shawn Hall, a spokesman for Telus, said in a phone interview that, as a result of negotiations with international mobile carriers, Telus has lowered its roaming rates by 60 to 80 per cent since 2011. “We're always adjusting our roaming rates,” he said, adding that the company also offers phone unlocking. “We heard from customers a few years ago that roaming rates were a concern for them,” Hall said, and since the company introduced its policy and rate changes, “we really don't get complaints about roaming anymore.” Albert Lee, a spokesman for Bell, did not provide answers to specific questions, though he responded in an email, saying: “We are committed to reducing the cost of international mobile roaming, and reducing prices of our most popular consumer rate plans to the US is a major first step.” Industry Minister James Moore told reporters last month that the CRTC's request for roaming data is a worthwhile exercise on an issue that has concerned Canadians. —With reporting by Simon Doyle at sdoyle@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

With new roaming plans, customers still vulnerable to extra charges: PIAC

News | October 7, 2013

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