The roaming orgy: iPhone, data and the telecoms

Note: See our post about avoiding exorbitant roaming fees here.

Not long after I returned from a recent trip to Canada, I was surprised to find a $400 cellphone bill  in the mailbox.  This seemed odd because I’d  made only two phone calls when I was  there, the longer one for 15 minutes.

But when I looked closer at the breakdown, I saw what was going on. It wasn’t  I who’d been making dozens of long-distance calls back to the States — it was the phone itself. While I thought my iPhone was sitting “unused” in my jacket, it had  been constantly checking my e-mail for 72 straight hours.

You see, using a data-enabled cellphone in a foreign land has become a little like falling asleep on a train in Naples — if you’re not careful, you could end up with empty pockets. You know the feeling.

“Shock, fear, panic,” said Mike Cottmeyer, a software consultant in Suwanee, Ga., referring to an $800 iPhone data bill he’d been hit with after visiting Toronto for a few days last year. “It kind of makes you sick to your stomach.”

The roaming ripoff stems from a sad new kind of Catch-22: With all the contracts, agreements and stipulations we’ve signed on for, there’s more fine print than ever and less time to read it. And like a high schooler’s nightmare, if you fail to memorize everything, you could be in big trouble.

For an idea of how easy it is for travelers to rack up a nauseating data bill, consider that most phone companies charge roaming customers about  two cents per kilobyte. How much is that? Well, your average e-mail message might be 10 kb. So that’s around 20 cents per e-mail. Not instantly fatal.

Well, what if someone sends you a message with a snapshot in it —that might run a megabyte or two (about 2,000 kb). So while the picture of your nephew in his first snowstorm might be priceless in one sense, in another it just cost you  40 bucks.

But even that is child’s play. The real action comes when travelers use their phones to surf the Web or watch videos — both of which can consume thousands of times more data than checking e-mail. The blogosphere is littered with ghastly tales of “bill shock” over such unanticipated fees, like the American who visited London for two weeks, bringing his Web-enabled iPhone, not a laptop, for all computing needs. The price tag on that bit of light traveling was just ...

...$3,000.

Then there was the Briton who, while vacationing in Portugal, decided to download an episode of “Prison Break” to his cellphone. The guy ended up owing close to $60,000.

Most of the really galactic fees — like this one — end up being partially refunded. When I complained, mine was too — but it took me 20 minutes of arguing with the customer service rep, more than most people would likely bother with.

“You get this false-positive feeling of comfort,” said Gerry Purdy, an Atlanta-based mobile communications analyst for the consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. “You get off the airplane and say, hey, the phone works? And my e-mail’s coming? That’s great.”

But sometimes unwitting consumers and Web columnists don’t realize they’ve been silently shifted to a new set of much more expensive “roaming” rates that are, as Purdy put it, “almost insane.”

(AT&T says roaming users should receive a text message to beware of international rates, and that it's possible to disable the iPhone's roaming data feature.  Not everyone I spoke to received such a warning.)

You might wonder if sending all this data around the world costs the telecoms that much money. But consider your home broadband connection, a kind of all-you-can-eat buffet that allows you to scarf down as many Web pages, photos, songs and movies as you can in one month. All for about $40 — about the same as what they charged you for that pic of your nephew in the snow.

If you had to pay that kind of price for every byte of your monthlong smorgasbord of home broadband,  you’d probably be paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. So wherefore the discrepancy?

AT&T, the only telecom that offers the data-hungry iPhone, won’t say whether the roaming rates reflect the real cost of keeping users connected internationally. A spokesman wrote only that “roaming fees are established by the carriers whose networks are available to our customers while traveling abroad” and that “AT&T must pay these fees to the carrier per the agreement.”

This response sidesteps the rather obvious fact that AT&T is itself an international service provider —  charging roaming fees to visiting foreigners — and therefore knows precisely how much  or rather how little  data transfer costs.

For a hint at the real answer, we can look to the European Union, which recently agreed to caps on both the price of text messages — about 14 cents U.S. — and the price of data: 1 euro, or about $1.50, per megabyte, more than 10 times less than what AT&T and other U.S. telecoms charge for roaming. Our own Federal Communications Commission declined to comment on the issue, noting only that if consumers have a problem with roaming charges, they should send complaints.

Frustrated with “unbelievable” roaming costs, Howard Thaw of Nova Scotia has found ways to scrimp when traveling with his iPhone. For one: Make sure you use it near a wireless connection point —  at a Starbucks, say, so you can access the Web without always hearing a cash register. But as Thaw noted, that sort of “defeats the purpose of what the phone was designed to do” — i.e., work anywhere.

Thaw speculated on the mentality behind the pricing: “If you can afford an iPhone,” he said, “why shouldn’t you be able to afford the data charges, especially if you’re traveling on business and you have a company paying?”

Cottmeyer, the software consultant from Georgia, did exactly that. Admitting he should have read the fine print, he gritted his teeth and expensed the $800 charge. “Did I feel like it was fair? Absolutely not. But I didn’t feel like I had a leg to stand on.”

Cottmeyer’s boss told him not to let it happen again and asked him to write a warning memo about it for his colleagues. The post is online at Cottmeyer’s blog, LeadingAgile.com, if anyone, including the FCC, would like to read it.

In print as "Cellphone bills that truly roam."  Note added that the data roaming feature can be turned off.

— David Sarno

Comments

[Greg Seares]

I appreciate your article, and I agree that international roaming fees are waaaay too expensive, but how come you make no mention of personal responsibility? I just returned from a trip to Tokyo yesterday, and had the foresight to call AT&T before I left for my 2 week trip and inquire about international fees for my iphone. I bought an international voice plan for $5.99 a month, and an international data plan for $60 a month, which got me 50mb of data (they have different levels of data plans to purchase - up to $200/month for I think 500mb). All this info is also on their web site. My bill will obviously be higher than usual because of these extra fees, but it's way less than the $800 the fool in your article spent. All he had to do was be proactive before he left and looked into it. If I were his boss, I would have told him to get a brain and think about how modern technology works before leaving on a business trip overseas!

[LaValle Linn]

This seems to be old news. January of last year, I turned off the roaming when I went to Alberta. The same when I was in Stockholm in 2007. Just looked for the wi-fi. And even though there wasn't supposed to be any in Sweden, I found quite a few spots.

[pete griffiths]

Hi David

Good article on the extortionate charges.

I have a couple more points on this that may interest you.

A) a very important difference between the new phones such as the blackberry and the iphone is that these are not just phones - they are all-in-one PDAs that include your calendar and your contact database.
B) this being the case you naturally want to use your phone/pda for these function whilst overseas
B) but if you naively use it in this way without even using email yourself as you correctly point out you can nonetheless be hit with huge charges because of the fact that your phone is downloading stuff without you doing anything
C) the only way to avoid this is to disable the wireless functionality so that you can continue to use the device for contacts and calendar but make it impossible for the phone to access the internet
D) on the blackberry you can easily disable the antenna and thereby disable internet access
E) on the iphone you cannot turn off the wireless function in this way which is a real problem (if this has changed recently I do not know of it)
F) in fact the only way that I know that you can disable wireless is to remove the SIM from the phone. This voids the AT&T/Apple warranty.
G) so you have a catch 22 - don't remove the sim when overseas and face huge bills or remove the sim and void the warranty
H) or of course you could not take the phone which makes its use as a pda moot

I recommend removing the SIM. It is easily done with a paper clip. You stick it into a tiny hole in the top of the phone, a tray pops out with the SIM in it, you remove the sim and store it somewhwre safe then replace it when you get home.

Alternatively you can go into settings and undo all your browsing and email settings - more troublesome.

Or you can buy an unlocked phone and use a local SIM. But this is expensive if you don't get overseas a lot. And this also voids your warranty.

It's a hard world.

Hope this is helpful and well done pointing this out. As the above makes clear this is particularly pernicious for iphone users.

:)

[Troels]

I use my iPhone for business and travel constantly throughout Europe. The best strategy is to use to leave the 'Data Roaming' off and to set your inbox to "Push"-messaging and your "Fetch" to manual. Briefly turn on your roaming every now and then to get your messages. This means you will only download e-mails when the roaming is on reducing the phone bill by hundreds of euros and dollars.

[David Rahman]

As informative as this article might be, putting the image of an iPhone along side it is very misleading. The iPhone has a default setting of blocking data roaming. You must actively set it to allow the roaming. By default, if you go to another country and try to check your email or browse the web, download movies, it will block the activity and warn you that you must turn on Data Roaming first.

[Rico]

poor iPhone users! Proof once again that your an idiot if you buy anything from Apple! On my Blackjack, after getting an unlock code straight from AT&T, I just pop in a European SIM when going there.. Problem solved. Of course Steve Jobs doesn't allow that on his 'best phone ever made'......

[Randall L. Stevie, not]

AT&T is evil. They are apparently not even responding to my state's attorney general about a much smaller dispute. Insanely small when you count the number of times their henchman (CCA) have called me.

Would never touch AT&T again under any circumstance.

[Carol]

I'm going to another country next week, and I did my research. I will be turning off data roaming and anything else that can incur charges, leaving only wifi enabled. If you're smart enough to be able to work an iPhone, you should be smart enough to plan in advance.

[BW]

That's big corporations (like AT&T) for you. They would rather have consumers pay the big fees than be responsible and fully warn their customers to pocket the extra cash.

[Nancy]

Dear David, I relived my Iphone nightmare this morning when I read your story.
My husband and I went to Southeast Asia in October, we were in 5 countries in 3 weeks. We were there for a business trip. He works, and I play. I brought my Iphone with me, and used it from the minute I got to Tokyo {first stop} until the last night before returning home in Seoul, Korea. I received a text in Korea from At & T saying they were suspending my service because of high usage. I called right away and was told over the phone, that my bill was over $6,000.00. I was shocked, horrified, and could only think of the impending divorce when I confronted my husband with this outrageous bill. I could not understand what I did or how I had done this. My usual bill is $125.00 a month.
The minute I got home I called AT&T to see how to rectify this situation, I spoke with 9 different people from all over the United States in four weeks. Some were helpful and some were less than. After 9 different calls on different days, pleading my case and the same old story getting nowhere I had a mini breakdown, crying that I was getting no satisfaction from anyone, and I must be able to speak to someone that could do something. Luckily, I tugged on the heartstrings of this one woman, the day before Thanksgiving who assured me that she would get my case to a manager. The reps that I talked to are only allowed to adjust the bill by $250.00, I obviously needed more help than $250.00. Meanwhile my angst was really high as the bill was due, and I did not want to get charged late charges on the $6,000.00. I got a call back from a manager that put my disputed bill in suspension and therefore I would not be late with a payment.

One week later to my complete surprise I got a call at home from the assistant to the president of At&T. He was the problem solver. I did get the bill adjusted, and was happy that someone finally was listening to me. This is what I learned.. Turn off your data roaming, which will prevent from downloading emails. Use Wifi when possible. If I had been told this when I purchased this phone, I would have been aware of all of this. I went to the Apple Store where I purchased the phone and they pointed the finger at At & T, and when I went to AT&T they pointed the finger at Apple. I still don't understand if I have a Iphone why I can't use the email in a foreign country without these ridiculous charges.
Oh, I forgot to mention to you that I am a 65year old Grandmother that got the Iphone to text and email my granchildren.

Regards,
Nancy
Santa Monica, California

[Devorah Sklar]

Dear David,

I too have experienced the outrageous cell phone bill in the thousands of dollars which I received a couple of years ago due to data usage on a business trip overseas to Israel. SInce then I have a Blackberry Curve through TMobile and fortunately they offer an unlimited international data plan for $14.95 per month so when I travel I can leave my phone on constantly. For phone calls I always get a local prepaid sim card to put in my unlocked Motorola phone which I picked
up in Taiwan (much cheaper there). The calls back to the USA using
local sim cards is far cheaper (costing about $.02 - $0.14 per minute) depending on country.

Also the local sim cards offer free incoming calls (something US
carriers should start to think about). I also use Callwave for my
voice mail which sends me an email with the message as a wave file and text version together with the name and phone number of the caller. I can then email them back or text or just call from my local
phone. This saves a considerable amount of money and also I can just
listen to the messages on my computer if I want or through my phone.
Either way I don't have to call my voice mail using my cell phone.
My voicemail comes to me.

US carriers need to catch up with the rest of the world as to what
they charge and the services they provide. TMobile is usually
ahead of the pack with charges and services. I have had unlimited text messaging for about 5 years already. The other carriers have just offered that this past year.

Respectfully,
Devorah Sklar

[Jim Plannette]

I have traveled with my iPhone quite a bit. When I'm outside the country, I receive a message warning me about automatic downloading of data with the suggestion to turnoff "data roaming." It's quite simple; settings/general/network/ data roaming. It doesn't hamper receiving data in a wireless setting, i.e., your hotel or Starbucks.

[Eric Hanauer]

As a web columnist, you should be expected to be savvy enough about electronic gadgets to know how to properly use them. The iphone clearly tells you in the settings menu, "Turn data roaming off when abroad to avoid substantial roaming charges when using email, web browsing, and other data services."

Amid all the whining about charges, you never mentioned the fact that data roaming can and should be turned off. You missed the opportunity to be of service to your readers and opted for fear and loathing instead.

I do not and never have worked for Apple. I'm just an iphone user who reads instructions.

[Bruce Feldman]

Well, at least your phone worked in Toronto. About 15 years ago I got a
new phone from Verizon specifically because they told me it would work
in Toronto. When I got to Toronto, of course it didn't, not once, not
ever.

A few years later I started spending more time in Europe and South
America. At that time Verizon was charging $2.50 per minute for calls
from Europe back to the U.S., and T-Mobile $1.50 per minute. I got a
T-Mobile phone, had it unlocked (one of the great things about T- mobile
is that they do it for free) and bought pay-as-you-go SIM cards
everywhere. The cost to call within Europe or even to the U.S. was
about 25 cents per minute. I even used it to check the messages on my
U.S. number and and then called everyone back from my temporary number.

I did the same thing in Brazil twice in the last few years. I once paid
$7 for a pay-as-you-go SIM card from TIM in Brazil and used it for about
2 weeks! I kid you not.

These are not data plans, however, so that still could be a problem overseas.

The wireless carriers are charging usurious rates for international
roaming, and they know it. You would be doing a service to your readers
if you spread the word that there's a cheap, easy way to trump them.
(Even a GSM phone from another carrier can be unlocked at an independent
phone store for about $20.)

Now, as to the G1 phone i just got from T-Mobile, don't get me
started...

[Mike Cottmeyer]

Okay... to the the guy that referenced the fool with the $800 bill... that fool was me. I had been all over India and Europe in 2007 with a Blackberry and never incurred more than a few hundred of usage. I was expecting more charges by going overseas, just not $800 more. Also, I accepted responsibility for my bill and took my lumps. I did not ask for a refund. The post that triggered David's interview more a warning than a complaint.

http://www.leadingagile.com/2008/11/watch-out-for-excessive-at-roaming.html

To all those in the post that suggest to turn off data roaming... that is not really the point.

The point is I WANT to periodically use my iPhone overseas without getting raped on international charges. Sure... they offer international plans but you have to pay that all the time. If you are only out of the country occasionally, it doesn't work. The rate applied is based on when the usage is billed, not when it occurred. International data usage can show up on your bill months after you traveled and maybe months after you turned off the pre-paid rate.

To those that comment this is not the iPhone's fault... I agree, but.... The iPhone does consume data at a higher rate than most any device that has come before it . The fact you have near desktop quality browsing and fast 3G data means you can consume data much faster than most other hand held devices.

So... I learned my lesson. Each time I have left the country after this incident, I turn off data roaming and don't use my iPhone as a data device unless I am on the hotel WiFi. I don't blame AT&T for my problem, but I am pissed that they charge way, way too much for data access overseas. It is fully disclosed, but highway robbery none the less.

[Scott]

Another tip is that AT&T will prorate your plan when you sign up or drop- both the cost and the usage amount. This can be an advantage or a problem. For example let's say your billing date is the 1st and you sign up for a $60, 50MB international data plan on the 15th. You will be charged $30 for 25MB to be used between the 15th and the end of the month. So make sure you are aware of your billing date and plan to sign up and drop the plan on the most appropriate dates for your needs.. AT&T does allow you to drop or add these plans at any time. However as mentioned above, the date the foreign carrier posts the charges is the date the usage comes off your plan, so check your roaming usage online and make sure everything is posted before turning off your plan. I've had very good experiences using these plans with my iPhone overseas.

[DamselDiver]

I was hit with an $850 iPhone bill when I returned to the States from a three month international trip. Data Roaming was off, but I was on the AT&T network in Guam which my iPhone determined as my home network. I had to pay the bill to turn my phone service back on, but was able to negotiate an adjustment to my bill. The caveat was it was a credit, not a refund.

I have a separate quad band unlocked phone I use for traveling that I use with pay-go sim cards. In most countries they are quite economical. I was aware of cell shock and still got burned by AT&T.

I was recently awarded a substantial check from a class action lawsuit that was filed against T-Mobile from some data billing irregularities.

In both cases I practiced conservative use of my phone and was taken advantage of with aggressive billing. Also in both cases I was given an account credit when I challenged the billing errors. It took three years but I ended up ahead a few dollars on the T-Mobile class action lawsuit. The consumer will catch a break only when laws are passed that prevent these aggressive billing practices.

[whateh]

Why didn't you write a paragraph explaining what your readers can do to avoid roaming charges? Like iPhone's "Airplane Mode"?

[Xenu]

AT&T is the WORST part of owning an iPhone. There domestic coverage is pathetic compared to Verizon, and the reliability and strength of their "3G" signal is certainly not "as advertised." When AT&T's exclusivity deal with Apple ends, the numbers of people who run to other carriers will be staggering. Count on it.

[jenny]

Horrible... I knew At&T was awful.

I'll just get an iPOd Touch and use it with wifi... cant go wrong there!

[ATT IS DISHONEST]

ATT must charge when the call is made, not when the billing is calculated. As soon as you make the call, it becomes a liability on your account, just like when you make a credit card charge. I have successfully fought this with ATT, but they are bastards, and we get ZERO help from the government regulators.
By ATT's reasoning, any merchant, after you purchase something, could change the terms of sale and bill you for more a month later.
I advise to tape every call made to ATT and post them on the 'net.

[Anne Mirkin]

Dear David,

Regarding your column in yesterday's L.A. Times, the solution to the dilemma of high international data costs with an iPhone is simply to use a Verizon Blackberry for data when traveling worldwide. I do this effortlessly throughout the world.

Cost for a domestic unlimited data plan is $29.99; it goes to $64.99 for an international unlimited data plan. So for $35 for one month you can download all the data you choose almost anywhere in the world. And if you are away less than one month Verizon prorates the charge, so it can cost as little as $5 for a few days out of the country.

And despite the loss of all the cool features of an iPhone, you do gain the superior services of Verizon and a telephone with far longer battery life!

[mia]

The problem is not that we are idiots who do not know that roaming outside the US costs an arm and a leg.
The problem is that you can never be sure that the damn iphone is not updating or checking or downloading and wracking your bill in the meantime, unless it is actually turned off AND that the price per kb would be so exorbitant as to end up in hundreds and thousands of dollars.

While traveling to a country in Europe which is NOT part of an international package, that is you canNOT buy one in advance and your ONLY option is to pay per kb, i turned my iphone on for a few minutes here and there at a time to send sms-s (which by the way cost an arm and a leg as well). Somehow in the meantime the iphone managed to download $500 worth of data. WTF?!?! And no, i did not get the sms that i am being charged for roaming, and even if I had, i still would not be aware that iphone is downloading THAT much data costing me THAT much. I have traveled many times before, all over the world, used a pda phone - blackberry and even if i expect to pay up, NO, i would not guess that amount. This is ridiculous and it is praying on people's ignorance or should i say, inexperience. Not everyone is a tech whiz and does not have to be. I pay my bill every month like I am supposed to, that is my responsibility. Knowing how to stop my phone from putting me over the edge, not so much.

If there is an action class lawsuit regarding this matter, I would LOVE to join. Please, let me know if you know of one.

[Chris, Venice, CA.]

I recently purchased an iphone for my wife for her birthday. Three weeks later she traveled to Montreal to visit her family. Before leaving we dutifully turned all data roaming features off and fetch off following the downloaded instructions from AT&T. During her visit our 12 year old son wanted to show his mother's iphone to his cousin. In less then 1minute they were watching a Youtube video on the iphone and in less than 10minutes had rung up a data roaming bill of over $1200. This is like having a one armed bandit in your pocket. Press the wrong button and you're toast. Maybe it's more like having a loaded gun in your pocket. Either way Apple should remove those cute little apps that come loaded into the iphone or at least send a warning about them. On the other hand AT&T should be brought up before the FCC and made to answer for their egregious price gauging practices when it comes to data roaming. Thirdly we need laws that protect the consumer against new technology rip-offs.

[Lee H]

AT&T could certainly handle this better. I have just returned from a trip to Europe with a PC data card and an iPhone. I spent much of last week on the phone to AT&T, trying to 'fix' my data plan, after they had suspended it for 'excessive data usage'. It took four phone calls from England to do this. Don't they have customers who actually work using their products? 20MB per month is not much data for a PC. OK, we've upgraded you to 200MB. Per month? Yes, and you're already over the limit. It will now cost you $5 per MB. You don't have an unlimited data plan? No. So I had to use my PC data card with this in mind. It made work very difficult.

I got back to the US today and i just received the same text message about excessive data use, this time about my iPhone. 140MB of what? I just can't believe that. These are great products that we love to use but we are being overcharged for the convenience of data everywhere.