Canadian carriers continue to fleece for data roaming
I'm taking my family to South Carolina for holidays this year and thought I would look at options with my cellular carrier for US Roaming. I'm with Bell Mobility. Turns out the options for data...suck! They aren't "kinda high" or "a bit steep" or even "that could add up", they just downright suck.
Bell would be charging me $6 per MB for data use in the US. To put that in perspective, each photo from my phone would cost about $2 to upload. Since I will be on vacation that would kinda add up a bit, wouldn't it. MobileJaw.com loads up at around 200k, so I could read 5 articles for $6 but a site like PhoneDog.com is just under 1MB, so to go there and then read 1 article it would cost me about $10-$12. OUCH!!!
Of course, Bell, in there infinite gratuitous nature offer a wonderful deal. I could pay $10 upfront and only pay $1/MB. That still means it will cost me $2 to read an article on PhoneDog multiplied out by a number of sites and a week of doing so...ya. Normally I would use about 230MB in a week on my cell, which would be $240...at best!
Before you defend Bell saying they have to pay charges to whichever carrier I am roaming on give yourself a shake. Bell would have worked out a deal that is ridiculously low from roaming partners.
BTW, Bell isn't alone here; TELUS and Rogers are just as guilty, with Rogers looking to be the best option. With Rogers you can prepay $60 and get 75MB ($0.80/MB).
A better option for data is to get an AT&T SIM card and load it up. The SIM will cost you $25 and then $20 for 100MB but that is still $15 cheaper than the best Canadian carrier option.
The best option is to always find free WiFi but that isn't always the most convenient one. Carriers need to stop fleecing for roaming.