Canadian Man Hit with $8000 Mobile Broadband Bill while in Europe

Canadian Man Hit with $8000 Mobile Broadband Bill while in Europe

Well, I guess the horrors of outrageous mobile bill while roaming still happen. And you would think the mobile operators will have learned from previous years’ PR disasters or users would have learned to be carefull with the data when abroad.

Alberta Man Got an $8000 Bill

Car salesman Jason Boutang from Alberta, Canada, travelled to France in June, where he decided to listen to streamed radio station on his iPhone while overseas. His Service Provider was Virgin Mobile. Upon his return home, he was “greeted” by a cool $7,763.7 (Canadian) in data charges.

The guy did confirm that he turned on data roaming while in Europe, but was not expecting so much in charges.

How Did This Happen

When a mobile phone appears in a visited mobile network (the guy’s home network was Virgin in Canada, so any mobile operator in France was visited), it still can use the services, but the pricing will go way up as it will be using a foreign network under the roaming agreement with his home network. So, the home “unlimited data” agreements will not apply in this case, and the charges would accumulate at a cool rate of 5c/Kb or more!

Streaming does use a lot of data with the data rates of about 30kbps or more. Especially listening to streaming radio or music can get you in trouble as people tend to listen to radio for hours.

Luckily for Jason, he wsa not a push-over and filed a complaint with the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). After that Virgin announced that they were prepared to consider the guy to be on an International Roaming plan, and tuned the bill down to $2000, which still is a hefty chunk of cash to pay for music listening.

How to Avoid Huge Charges while Traveling

There are several ways to avoid huge bills when traveling, especially on data:

• Plan in advance – check out your home operator’s roaming charges and whether they have traveling/roaming bundles. Even with the price tag around $50 – $200, you will still be better off

• If you are using notebook – install one of numerous free data counting applications and check your data consumption regularly

• Keep you roaming turned off by default – most smartphones and broadband modems’ connection managers let you do that. Only turn the data roaming on when you really need it – it usually takes only couple of seconds to do this – and turn the roaming off when you don’t need the data

• Kill all background data-consuming applications on your smartphone – maps, news readers, email checkers, sport scores, or wether reports. Even if you only turn your roaming on and off on demand, your background apps may immediately hog down the data

• If you absolutely need mobile broadband with your Notebook abroad – buy a prepaid local plan. Practically all European operators sell prepaid Mobile Broadband pland below $100 with the USB modem either free or at a reasonable $30 – $40. You can order online and have it shipped to your hotel.

Summary

I would say – just use your head and common sense. Most businesses out there are not below making money at any expense hiding behind muddy contracts and small script. Assume the worst and double check in advance. Do a little research before taking the plunge and you will be ok.

Latest AT&T Promotions

Check out some eye candy from AT&T, who by the way have a bunch of International roaming plans to help you stay out of trouble while traveling. Buy via online store (click on any image below to follow the right link) and you’ll get one of their latest deals gauranteed (either a free phone or a significant discount).

Go to the Top