Roamer: Use Your Phone Abroad Without Crazy Roaming Bills

[Marcus Yam]

How to avoid roaming charges and bill shock when going away for business or pleasure.

Roamer: Use Your Phone Abroad Without Crazy Roaming Bills : Read more

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

Interesting. I'm all for getting rid of BS roaming charges, been ripped off by my provider before I got a local SIM... joke's on them though, never paid the greedy fools. And nowadays I don't even feel to have a need for cellular calls. All my communication is done through the Internet. I flat out tell people to stop calling my phone when they complain they can't reach me (coverage is bad in my area) and use Skype or Gmail chat (or Razer Comms, or FB message, or whatever). I feel that traditional cell phone calls are dying and the only reason it's still offered in the West is so that the familiar providers can keep ripping people off for a greatly overpriced service - both cell and data - without being called out on their BS. Don't forget that in many countries $1 means 60 minutes of phone call (here in India, for instance), an SMS costs a few US cents and a good 3G data plan costs about $25/month (10 GB traffic at 6 Mbps or so). Your providers are ripping you off horribly for no good reason. From what I see, pretty much everyone hates Verizon, AT&T and others - please stop buying contracted phones from them if you can and buy unlocked (read: normal) versions directly from manufacturers if you can. Stop living in debt, because that's what a phone contract essentially is - another form of credit. You are buying something you cannot afford if you can't pay for it right away.

Things are changing now with the popularity of unlocked devices sold directly through the Google Play store, but unlocking devices is a challenge in Roamer's quest for the mass market.

Not a challenge at all in normal countries, the world is only now starting to adopt BS US contract-locked phones but most people view it as idiocy it is and refuse to be ripped off.

Roamer told us that even a 2G data connection is good enough to initiate a call; 3G and LTE are luxuries purely for data

Please please please tell me people actually know this and you're just pointing out the obvious? I've never used anything but GSM on my phones my entire life and the calls are just fine. (Or they were fine until the scumbag Indian government forced all providers to decrease transmission power by a factor of 10. Can't get coverage in buildings now at all. Damn ecohippies.)

 

[Marcus Yam]

Please please please tell me people actually know this and you're just pointing out the obvious? I've never used anything but GSM on my phones my entire life and the calls are just fine.

To initiate an outgoing call, you need a data connection to tell Roamer to connect your call by also calling IN to your foreign SIM so you're not charged for long distance outgoing minutes.

 

[getochkn]

The biggest thing for US people is unlocking the phone. It was completly illegial till they just changed the law that phone owners can unlock their phone, but a company can't run offer the service, yes 99.999% of unlocks are so complicated hardware wise now, that you need to have a company do it because you can't do it at home, yet there are no companies because they are illegal, so you have to do it at home, but you can't because the phone companies make it so hard to do.......You end up in a loop.

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

[/quote]To initiate an outgoing call, you need a data connection to tell Roamer to connect your call by also calling IN to your foreign SIM so you're not charged for long distance outgoing minutes.[/quote]Ah, my apologies, I really shouldn't comment on articles after sleep deprivation and not reading them properly.

 

[cemetary]

Actually in India reliance used to do the same to provide free national roaming, but eventually got detected as fraud by other providers and service was withdrawn

 

[makaveli316]

In Europe they want to get rid of the Roaming crap with a new law, at least in the EU countries. That would be great and i hope it'll come soon.

 

[BenSR]

I've used Roamer in the US, by far the best roaming option.