Rogers launches $7.99 / 50MB roaming package for travel to the United States

There are thousands of regular road warriors and air travellers that head south to the States each month. Earlier this year, Rogers announced it would introduce a $7.99 per day, 50MB data roaming package to accommodate those who needed a bit more legroom when using their smartphones.

That number is, Rogers claims, “nearly twice the data a Rogers wireless customer would typically use per day while in Canada,” and the company says it has done research to show that 50MB is more than enough for the vast majority of travellers.

The rate is applied by default when assenting to a data package, obviating the need to purchase a roaming plan in advance of one’s trip. Users can text “usage” to 3330 to check how much data is left on their allotment, without penalty.

Rogers has a leg up on the competition with this plan, as Bell and TELUS don’t offer competitive daily data plans for travel to the U.S.

TELUS, for example, offers a $20/25MB or $40/100MB plan that applies for 30 days; overages cost $1/MB and the plans don’t appear to be renewable between cycles.

Bell offers a renewable $40/100MB plan with a more agreeable $0.40/MB overage.

WIND Mobile offers a permanent $1/MB fee for travel to the States, but doesn’t appear to have any bulk packages. Mobilicity charges $1.50/MB when travelling to the U.S. as well.

For users with unlocked devices, T-Mobile offers a $3/200MB plan that can be renewed every day, which is more competitive than the Rogers plan, but users must have a compatible device and purchase a SIM card with a minimum of $15 service, which can put you out close to $30.

For more information, check out the Rogers Roaming page. This also applies to Fido users.

Update: To be fair, there are other places to get deals on roaming. We’ve written about Roam Mobility before and they offer USA roaming plans for $3.95/day that include 100MB of data and unlimited talk and text. -IH