By David
If you are currently using or have used any kind of cell phone, you should already be familiar with the concept of roaming and what it is all about. However, you may not be sure how the roaming system works in regards to a prepaid phone. To help clear up this matter, we’ve assembled a short informative guide to bring you up to speed on prepaid roaming.
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How Roaming Charges Work
For a typical cell phone, roaming charges would be paid at the end of the month with the rest of their bill, a bit like your check at restaurant would be. Prepaid roaming works just a little bit differently. With a prepaid phone, you pay upfront like you would with a cafeteria meal plan and then roaming is paid for out of the balance on that account. As it can be quite shocking to have a conversation cut off in the middle because you are out of money on your account only to find out that you were roaming and did not know it, a couple of solutions have been implemented to address this problem.
User Controlled Solution
The first of the solutions addressing the issue of prepaid roaming is the implementation of a pop-up dialog box on your phone that lets you know when you are entering a roaming area and asks if you would like to begin roaming, or if you would prefer to disallow it, with disallow being the default setting in case you accidently miss the message. This not only informs the user of the situation making them aware of the fact that talking in these areas could cause them to incur additional fees, but also gives them the power to avoid those fees by choosing to disallow roaming in that particular instance. This solution is great for those users that like to decide for themselves on a case by case basis if the additional fees are worth it.
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Carrier Controlled Solution
Some carriers instead opted for a different solution to the prepaid roaming issue by simply disallowing roaming on prepaid phones altogether. There are two ways that they can go about doing this. The first method is to adjust the settings on the phone itself to not accept a signal from a roaming tower. Sometimes these settings are locked in and thus are unchangeable, but sometimes, it is possible to adjust them. This might require some digging through your phone’s settings to find the one that applies to roaming. The other method is for them to simply disallow roaming from their end, which unfortunately is not something that you will be able to change should you want to. This type of solution is best for those that do not want to have to worry about settings and additional fees preferring a simple cellular experience that takes care of those things for them.
Now that you know more about the concept of prepaid roaming and how that is managed from company to company, you can make informed decisions about what companies to use to get what you want.
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