By David
If you have had a cell phone for any length of time, you have likely encountered roaming charges at least once during that time. While we are all familiar with the charges themselves, many people are unsure what they are for and why they have to pay them. Let’s take a look at roaming charges and see if we can shed some light on these mysterious fees.
What is Roaming?
To understand roaming charges, you first need to understand what exactly roaming is. Every cellular carrier has a network made up of wireless cell towers that they use to create and maintain their coverage area. Typically, if you are outside this area you cannot get cell service from your company. However, not every company covers the same areas. Rather than build new towers to cover the gaps, many carriers choose to instead rent the services of towers owned by other companies. Whenever your device is receiving service from one of these towers, it is considered to be roaming, or simply put, receiving service from another company’s tower.
Why does it cost extra?
Even with an understanding of exactly what roaming is, many people still find themselves confused about why there are roaming charges. These additional fees on your bill go to cover the cost of renting the additional towers from other companies to provide service in areas not typically covered. You might be wondering why a carrier would charge these fees as renting a tower must be cheaper than maintaining their own. This is typically the case, however, when a company builds a new tower that cost is mitigated by slightly higher monthly bills across their entire customer base because everyone gains a larger network as a result. In the case of roaming, fees are only charged to those who are using the rented towers because they are the only ones gaining an advantage from those towers and as such it would not be fair to place the burden of payment on everyone else.
How can it be avoided?
Roaming charges can become quite burdensome if incurred frequently, but with a little common sense they can be avoided. First you will want to make sure your carrier’s native coverage extends over your home, your job, and other places you often visit. If it does not, this might explain why you are getting charged a good deal of roaming fees. Once you have identified that you are in a roaming area, check other carriers to see if their native coverage extends over these areas. If prices are not too different, it may be worth switching. If you are unable to switch however, you can still avoid roaming charges by just not using your device outside of native coverage areas unless you are in a Wi-Fi area and can take advantage of Wi-Fi calling as this will also count as native coverage and not roaming.
Now that you are familiar with what roaming charges come from and why they exist in the first place, you can more competently find ways to avoid incurring them in your daily life.
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