The packages sold by Roam Mobility are a lot more convenient than the other carriers. Rogers, by comparison, does not offer unlimited talk roaming packages, offers unlimited sent texts only and charges a per MegaByte data package add-on that’s either a one month pass (31 days) or a 3 month pass. Your other alternative is to buy a $7.99 per-day data package which will warn you when you approach the 50 MB limit per 24 hours, and if you authorize it to increase that limit, will immediately charge you another $7.99 for another 50 MB whether you need that much additional data or not. Roam Mobility has so many different package lengths that you can tailor your purchase to cover exactly the dates on which you will need the services. I like that.
Oh, and the Roam Mobility Talk & Text packages are unlimited and good for communications both anywhere in the U.S. as well as back to Canada while you’re south of the border. Need to absolutely call home on a daily basis? This is the economical way to do that. And with no need for cumbersome calling cards either. Just use all those numbers already programmed into your phone’s contact list. It’s as easy as that. I don’t think any of the big Canadian wireless carriers have ever dreamed of such a thing. Then we need to talk about relative costs. Sit tight – this may shock you a little.
The best deal from Rogers – their daily data add-on package – will run you $7.99 for a 50 MB data bucket, for a price of $0.16/MB. Roam Mobility? Their data only add-on prices range from $0.03/MB down to $0.01/MB. That’s a small fraction of the Rogers data price. How do the big carriers justify such fees? They don’t. They just want you to believe you have no choice. But you do.
Roam’s unlimited talk and text are available in 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30 day packages. Then you can purchase a data add-on to any unlimited talk and text package for an extra dollar per data on top of the cost of the talk and text package alone. The add-on data bucket increases based on the length of time for the package you buy (meaning you don’t have to spread your data use out evenly per 24-hour period like the data add-on from Rogers). The Roam data add-on option provides 300 MB of data with a 1 day package and that amount increases up to 9 GB of data with a 30 day package. Most Canadian wireless carriers don’t even sell 9 GBs monthly data for domestic use, much less in their roaming deals.
Consider this – 50 MB of data for one day from Rogers is a flat $7.99 add-on, while 300 MB of data from Roam Mobility comes with the 1 day unlimited talk and text for an extra $1 at a total cost of $3.95. At that size of package, the data from Rogers is twelve times more expensive! Even if you buy the proportionally most expensive ‘data only’ option from Roam Mobility without adding it on to a talk and text package, the cost for a 300 MB data bucket (which is good for 3 days) is $7.95, so you get six times the data bucket for slightly under the price offered from Rogers. And Roam still makes money, otherwise they wouldn’t offer it.
If you are more into tables for comparison, the following says everything.
Rogers: United States Talk & Text and some Data Travel Packs
Prices current on Rogers.com as of 29 Oct 2013
| Package Type | Minutes | Sent Texts | Data | Overage | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. Talk & Text Travel 40/100 |
40 | 100 | Nope | $0.75/min $0.25/sent text |
$35 |
| U.S. Talk & Text Travel 40/Unlimited |
40 | Unlimited | Nuh-uh | $0.63/min | $40 |
| U.S. Talk & Text Travel 100/Unlimited |
100 | Unlimited | Yeah right | $0.50/min | $60 |
| 1 Month U.S. Talk/Text & Data Travel 100/Unlimited |
100 | Unlimited | 200MB | $0.40/min $0.80/MB |
$100 |
| 3 Month U.S. Talk/Text & Data Travel 500/Unlimited |
500 | Unlimited | 1GB | $0.35/min $0.50/MB |
$300 |
Rogers: United States 24-hour Data Passes
Prices current on Rogers.com as of 29 Oct 2013
| One-time Fee | Bucket Size (Mb) | Effective Bucket Rate |
|---|---|---|
| $7.99 | 50 | $0.16/MB |
| $15.98 | 51-100 | $0.16-$0.32/MB |
Roam Mobility: Unlimited Talk & Text/Unlimited Talk, Text & Data
Prices current on RoamMobility.com as of 29 Oct 2013
| Plan | 1 Day | 3 Days | 7 Days | 14 Days | 30 Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unlimited Talk & Text | $2.95 | $8.95 | $20.95 | $34.95 | $59.95 |
| Unlimited Talk Text & Data | $3.95 300MB |
$11.95 900MB |
$27.95 2GB |
$48.95 4GB |
$89.95 9GB |
Roam Mobility: Data Only
Prices current on RoamMobility.com as of 29 Oct 2013
| Plan | 3 Days | 7 Days | 7 Days | 30 Days | 30 Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost & Bucket Size |
$7.95 300MB |
$14.95 500MB |
$19.95 1GB |
$29.95 2GB |
$59.95 5GB |
So what did it cost us for our service when we tried out Roam Mobility? Well, there were the two SIM cards we had to purchase up-front. At $19.95 each, that ran us a total of $44.69 including taxes (this is a Canadian company – you will pay tax). But we will continue to use those SIM cards in the future, so that was a one-time investment. The remaining costs below were based on Roam Mobility’s previous price model in 2012, so they can’t be exactly correlated to the current price model detailed above, but they give you a good comparison.
We bought the 7-day unlimited talk & text & data (then 500 MB) package for our trip. It worked out as we were going to be travelling for 7 days, but you can combine packages and have them start and end back-to-back for continuous coverage of whatever length of time you will be travelling. In our case this was $22.95 each for our packages, which including taxes came to $51.41. So a grand total of $96.10 gave us two phones with unlimited talk & text plus 500 MB of data each. All of which was less than the single 500 MB data add-on that was then available from Rogers at a cost of $100. No contest – Roam Mobility wins!