Adorned in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, Rogers CEO Guy Laurence today put another notch in the Rogers 3.0 belt.
Rogers has launched a new roaming initiative called ‘Roam Like Home’, eligible to Share Everything customers who roam often to the US. Internally called Project “Stripes,” we brought you information about it earlier this week.
The gist is quite simple: users on a Share Everything Plan, all of whom have unlimited calls and texts in Canada, are able to travel to the US and use their plans, including their data buckets, for $5/day. Before travelling, users text “travel” to 222 and they’re automatically enrolled in the plan.
So if you have a 6GB Share Everything plan, Roam Like Home simply enables you to spend $5 per day to make unlimited calls and texts, and a portion of your data bucket, in America. Users can make calls and send texts to both Canadian and US numbers, as well as use their data bucket, all within that $5/day fee.
The service works for up to 30 days in a row, though users will only be charged a maximum of $50 in a monthly period, so any usage after the first ten days is provided at no additional cost.
Rogers CEO Guy Laurence said that roaming is one of his customer bases’ most contentious payment issues, and look to avoid changing SIMs or buying per-use roaming bundles. The company already made using a smartphone relatively easy in the States by offering a daily 50MB package for $7.99/day, but Roam Like Home aims to consolidate voice, text and data into a single bundle.
The initiative, says Laurence is thanks to an improved reciprocal roaming agreement with AT&T, which allows Rogers to get cheaper rates on wholesale voice, text and data rates. He also said that Rogers developed its own set of technologies that allows a seamless billing experience for users travelling to the United States, which removes the distinction between local and international billing. Laurence said that the US is the first market for this product, but it’s possible that Roam Like Home could be expanded to Europe if he can negotiate competitive prices with carriers.
While Roam Like Home is a boon to users who don’t want to switch SIM cards, it butts up against solutions from Roam Mobility, which offers a base package of $3.95/day for 400MB of LTE data and unlimited voice/text using T-Mobile’s network, and KnowRoaming, whose SIM sticker we covered earlier this week offers a $7.95 package for unlimited 3G data in the States. Rogers customers who travel often but don’t use their monthly data allotment will find Roam Like Home useful, but Roam Mobility is still likely a better option for those who want a US number.
Earlier this year, new entrant WIND Mobile made waves by beginning to offer unlimited US roaming as part of its regular plans, which significantly increased subscriber numbers.
The Roam Like Home plan begins on Monday, November 10th.
[source]Rogers[/source]
