GigaOM » international roaming

AT&T offers up global Wi-Fi hotspot access if you have an international data plan

Kevin Fitchard — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:47:12 +0000

AT&T is trying to sweeten the pot for mobile customers who opt for its pricey international data roaming plans. AT&T has entered into an agreement with international hotspot aggregator Boingo to access its global wireless network for customers with international plans.

Subscribers of AT&T’s 300 MB or 800 MB international data plan will now get free access up to 1 GB of Wi-Fi data primarily in airports and public places in major European cities as well as in select cities in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Columbia, Japan and New Zealand. (You can find a complete list on AT&T’s site.) In February, AT&T inked a similar deal with The Cloud to give international customers access to 16,000 hotspots in the U.K. To access those networks, customers subscribing to a global data plan only need download AT&T’s international app.

That may sound like a perk, but it’s really not much of one when you consider what AT&T charges for these international plans: $60 for a 300 MB bucket of data and $120 for 800 MB. If customers know their primary mobile data use is going to be over Wi-Fi they can by a much cheaper Wi-Fi-only plan with no restrictions and access to much bigger hotspot footprint. For instance, Boingo offers its own $35-per-month plan that covers two devices and provides unlimited access to 200,000 hotspots in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Still, AT&T certainly isn’t alone in charging exorbitant rates for mobile data roaming. All of the U.S. carriers have pretty much priced global data plans beyond the reach of ordinary travelers – at least travelers who want to use their smartphones as they would ordinarily. Adding Wi-Fi access is a nice touch, but it doesn’t fix the broken global data roaming system.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

International data roaming is broken. Can MVNOs fix it?

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:34:49 +0000

Let’s face it: if you use your phone or tablet’s mobile Internet connection while travelling abroad, well, you’re screwed. Standard roaming rates for most operators can run upwards of $20 a megabyte. Some carriers will sell you a bucket of megabytes, but the going rates are still 10 to 20 times higher than what you’d typically pay for mobile data on a standard plan.

If you’re lucky enough to have an unlocked phone with GSM and HSPA radios, you can buy another carrier’s SIM card service when you arrive at your destination and pay local rates. If you’re really determined, you could rent a smartphone or mobile hotspot. Whatever option you choose you have to be prepared to either pay an exorbitant amount of money or go through an enormous hassle – sometimes both.

To put it simply, international data roaming is broken, and no U.S. carrier seems to be lifting a finger to fix it. They seem to prefer the miserable status quo to the headaches required to repair the system. But where the network operators are falling down, mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) are picking up the slack.

As its name implies, an MVNO doesn’t have a network of its own. Instead they buy minutes and data capacity from traditional carriers, and resell them under their own brands and pricing plans. While most MVNOs tend to work in a single country with a single carrier, there’s nothing preventing them from buying capacity on multiple networks in multiple countries and then selling international access to a customer in a single pricing plan.

Companies like Tep Wireless and XCom Global are doing just that, renting out mobile hotspots to European-bound travellers that they can take across borders. Both will save you a lot of money if you’re a globetrotting heavy data user, but they’re by no means cheap, charging upwards of $15 a day if you opt for unlimited data packages.

London-based Voiamo, however, is thinking bigger with a new service called GlobalGig. Instead of just renting you a hotspot and selling you a temporary plan when you travel, it proposes to replace your current country-limited 3G or 4G modem plan with a service that will work in multiple countries with a single pricing plan. Its rates are a comparable to the prices most of the major carriers charge for hotspot plans — starting at $25 for 1 GB a month and up to $50 for 5 GB — but those rates are good for the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

In the U.S., GlobalGig uses Sprint’s network, while in the U.K. and Australia it uses the 3 and Optus networks, but it is negotiating deals with carriers in other countries and plans to expand its global footprint soon, Voiamo CEO and founder Nigel Bramwell said. Its $120 hotspot — which can connect up to five devices through Wi-Fi — can support networks in 100 different countries, Bramwell said. As GlobalGig adds more carriers to its roster it will periodically send out new SIM cards to its customers, expanding their coverage to new countries.

If you’re an frequent international traveller, GlobalGig would be an ideal service especially if you already regularly use a mobile hotspot, but there are some limitations. The biggest is that the device can only access Sprint’s 1X and EV-DO networks. That means fairly slow data speeds compared to the LTE, HSPA+ and even WiMAX broadband service offered by other carriers. But Bramwell said GlobalGig’s next generation device will support all major global LTE networks. If that’s the case, the company will have something truly powerful on its hands: a 4G data service that knows no borders.

Voiamo may soon have some company in the global roaming market. Last month at a conference, Sprint MVNO Voyager Mobile revealed it has plans in the works to offer international voice and data plans, which charged the same rates whether home or abroad. Robert Gaal, the CEO of recently launched mobile broadband MVNO Karma, told me that his company might expand its social bandwidth model to other countries as well. Gaal, who is from and regularly visits the Netherlands, is increasingly frustrated with carrier roaming policies, said the only restriction to going international is finding inexpensive devices that support multiple 4G bands and technologies.

Featured image courtesy of Flickr User bredgur; SIM cards image courtesy of Flickr user mroach

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Why the Verizon iPhone 5 is a globetrotter’s best friend

Kevin Fitchard — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:03:48 +0000

It used to be the case that if you traveled extensively overseas, Verizon Wireless was the last carrier you wanted to sign a long-term contract with at home. Not only were its CDMA phones incompatible with the GSM networks used in most other countries, but also its lack of SIM cards meant you were stuck paying whatever ridiculous international roaming rates Verizon charged.

That all ends with the iPhone 5. The CDMA version of the device is not only the most internationally versatile of the different carrier variants, but it also has a SIM card slot, which Big Red is keeping unlocked, a Verizon spokesperson confirmed to the Washington Post. That means a Verizon iPhone 5 owner can go anywhere in the world, insert another carrier’s SIM card, and be up and running.

Of Apple’s three iPhone variants, the CDMA version is truly the global phone. Not only does it support Verizon, Sprint and Asian operators’ CDMA networks, but it contains the GSM and HSPA radios used by the majority of the world’s remaining carriers as well as long list of international LTE bands. But supporting a lot of bands means little if you can’t afford to use them. In most cases, international data roaming rates are so expensive, tapping into a foreign 4G LTE network or even a high-speed HSPA+ would be financial suicide.

But with an unlocked SIM slot, customers can always opt to pay local rates by buying a local SIM card. Typically carriers will manually unlock a device for you, but only after your contract expires or you’ve satisfied certain conditions of your service agreement. Verizon doesn’t seem to care whose network you connect to as long as you keep paying your monthly bill.

That unlock policy extends to other U.S. networks as well so technically you could insert an AT&T or T-Mobile nano-SIM into a Verizon iPhone and access their networks (presumably you could do the same with a Sprint LTE SIM, but you wouldn’t get access to its voice or 3G networks). That means if you broke your contract with Verizon you could immediately activate it on a competing network.

Keep in mind though that if you switched carriers, you wouldn’t have access to all networks. AT&T’s LTE network runs on a different 4G band, which requires a different iPhone 5 variant. T-Mobile won’t have LTE until next year, and even then its networks are designed to work with the AT&T version. Starting this year, though, all versions of the iPhone 5 will run over T-Mobile’s newly reconfigured 42 Mbps HSPA+ network.

Image courtesy of Flickr User bredgur

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Verizon turns on Razrs’ GSM radios, pushes out Android 4.0 upgrade

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 14:37:09 +0000

We knew international roaming was coming to Verizon’s LTE phones – the GSM radios shipped in many of its LTE handsets were just sitting there dormant – but on Friday, Verizon is finally turning them on in two of its devices, the Motorola Razr and the Razr Maxx, as part of the same update that will upgrade those handsets to Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich.

Verizon will start pushing out the update today, according to a blog post on Verizon’s site, giving customers access to new features such as Face Unlock and access to key applications, including the camera and dialer, from the phone’s lock screen. My colleague Kevin Tofel gives a full rundown of ICS’s features here.

Though the GSM radios will now be active, customers must still pay international rates, which aren’t cheap. Even if you subscribe to Verizon’s $5 a month global value plan, a 1 minute call in the U.K. will still cost $1, and prices go as high as $5 per minute in other countries. The phones will be able to access GPRS/EDGE/HSPA data networks as well, though be prepared for bill shock, as international data rates are even more exorbitant than voice rates.

Verizon does offer international data roaming plans that will help you manage your data spending, but these aren’t cheap either. A 100 MB plan will run you $25, which works out to roughly $250 a gigabyte.

One twist on Verizon’s LTE devices is they have SIM cards. Theoretically you could swap out your domestic SIM card for an international one and pay the same rates as a local in any foreign country. Verizon hasn’t stated whether it will let customers use that capability or if it will lock phones down to their SIMs.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Verizon offering new international data plans, but they ain’t cheap

Kevin Fitchard — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:25:33 +0000

Verizon Wireless next week will begin selling international data roaming plans much the same way it sells domestic data: buckets of megabytes for a set price. But don’t expect to get a lot for your dollar. Verizon is selling 100 MB of international data for $25 a month with access to CDMA and GSM/UMTS networks in 120 countries. That works out to be $250 a gigabyte, about 16 to 25 times what it charges domestic data usage.

Those prices may be exorbitant, but they’re still a vast improvement over what it offered beforehand. Previously Verizon sold a 50 MB bucket for $30 a month, a 150 MB for $75 and 300 MB for $125, which works out to between $416 and $600 a GB. In addition, if you were to go over your allotment in one of those old plans, overage fees of $5.12 a megabyte would kick in ($2.05 in Canada) so if you were to actually consume a gigabyte of data while overseas you could wind up paying nearly $5,000 for the privilege.

With the new plans, you’ll still pay dearly to use your smartphone internationally, but at least those extremely high rates are consistent. You can sign up for the service when you leave the country and discard it when you return, and if you go over your allotment Verizon gives you the option of buying another 100 MB bucket for $25 rather than charging punitive overage fees. To access most international networks, though, you’ll need a dual-mode phone like the iPhone.

If you’re actually foolish enough to use data services without signing up for an international plan, then don’t be surprised if you have to take out a second mortgage to pay your bill. Without a plan, Verizon charges $20.48 for a single megabyte. That amounts to more than $20,000 per gig. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Image courtesy of Flickr User bredgur

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.