While plan prices don’t seem to be fluctuating domestically, carriers have taken to US roaming deals as the new canvas for competition.
Today, TELUS altered its US roaming packages, which combine talk, text and data, to better compete with new offerings from Rogers and decreased prices from upstarts like Roam Mobility and KnowRoaming.
The company now has three packages, all with unlimited voice minutes and outgoing texts, differentiated only by length of the plans and the amount of data.
The first is a 3-day, $25 plan that offers unlimited talk and text and 150MB of data; the previous $25 package offered only 50 talk minutes, 50MB of data and 150 outgoing texts.
The second is a 10-day, $50 pass that offers 300MB data; the previous package was $45 and offered 150 minutes, 150MB of data and unlimited outgoing texts.
The third is a 30-day, $80 pass that offers 1GB data; the previous package cost $150 and offered 500 minutes and 1GB of data.
The new packages are undoubtedly more affordable, though the time constraints will force some users to pay for the 10-day plan. The overages are cheaper, too: $5/50MB ($0.10/MB) as opposed to $0.50/MB before. The comfort of not having to worry about voice minutes and outgoing text charges is important, too, but it’s the bare minimum TELUS could offer given Rogers’ new Roam Like Home deal, which allows Share Everything customers to pay $5 per day to access their domestic plan abroad.
Strangely, TELUS’s new packages don’t include a data-only option — or at least not a competitive one — as the $15/15MB option is still the only choice for those who want only data. Rogers’ $7.99/50MB daily option is still a much better deal.
Bell is the remaining outlier, offering separate bundles for voice & text and data. However, combining its $30 unlimited voice & text bundle with its $50/1GB data bundle comes to the same price as TELUS; its shorter-term plans, however, fall short.
Of course, Roam Mobility, which offers unlimited talk and text, and 400MB of LTE data for $3.95 per day is still a better deal, but it requires obtaining and activating a new SIM card and learning a new phone number.
[source]TELUS[/source]
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