Europe has recently stood up to put a stop on insane roaming costs for mobile phones. Shouldn’t the US companies follow suit?
More and more people are getting smart phones, and more and more people are realizing that calling over Wi-Fi with different applications is way cheaper, and even in some cases: free. In order to even compete with these rates, mobile companies need to step up and either eradicate international roaming fees or at least lower them.
StanaCard has actually come up with a brilliant way of call forwarding to avoid these roaming charges, so you don’t have to have a smart phone in order to reap the benefits! Check it out here.
This eventually will catch on, right? Roaming is so 1998. Remember when state-to-state roaming fees were abolished? It’s hard to recall, but if you close your eyes and think back… there was that time or two when you took your cell phone on vacation across the country and the dreaded ROAMING message popped up on the top of your screen. Perhaps your mom would yell at you to turn your phone off. Or maybe you thought, “How do they really know?” and tried to defy it by keeping it on?
But then you got home. And there was an extra $25 charge on your bill. Today, that would inflate to probably $200. In fact, it does. Check out the blog posted yesterday about it!
According to the UK Daily Mail article: The EU Commissioner for Europe’s digital agenda, Neelie Kroes, said the price gap between domestic mobile charges and roaming rates remains unjustifiably high. Consequently, she said her ultimate aim is to reduce the gap to nothing by 2015.
So far, the rule only is applicable to EU residents traveling within the EU – no rates will change for those leaving the continent. Hopefully the rest of the world – namely the USA – will follow suit soon.
What do you think? Will it happen anytime soon? Do you have any horror stories about going away and coming home to a steep charge on your bill?
-@StanaCardSara
-@StanaCardSara
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