By David
Whether you are new to the world of cellular devices or a seasoned veteran, you have likely heard of mobile roaming charges. These fees get tacked onto your cell phone bill every so often, but many are confused as to why or what they are even for. Below, we will take a look at mobile roaming charges and see if we can illuminate the topic for you.
Click here to compare cell phone plans and save hundreds. Free phone with activation.
What is Roaming?
To truly grasp what is going on with mobile roaming charges, you must first come to understand what roaming is. Every cellular carrier has a network of interconnected towers that provide wireless coverage for their customers. This area is referred to as their native coverage area. Not surprisingly, not all carriers have their networks in the same places. For some carriers, the cost of renting additional towers from other companies is less than the cost of building and maintaining new towers of their own, and thus they rent these extra towers to extend their coverage area without increasing the cost of everyone’s monthly bill. Even though renting is ultimately cheaper, the costs have to be mitigated by charging an additional fee on the bills of those who use these rented towers as they are the only ones truly gaining any advantage from them.
Why does it Cost Extra?
As was mentioned earlier, mobile roaming charges occur as a result of your provider attempting to mitigate the costs of renting additional towers. While the rent for these towers is cheaper than the cost and subsequent maintenance of a new tower, the benefits granted by the rented tower really only extend to those using those towers whereas a new tower would benefit everyone by extending the native coverage area of the network. When new towers are built, their cost is split amongst everyone and as such has a negligible effect on each customer’s monthly bill, however since a rented tower only benefits those using it, they must pay these additional fees on their own, rather than having them spread amongst the whole company’s customer base.
Click here to compare cell phone plans and save hundreds. Free phone with activation.
How to Avoid Roaming
Because mobile roaming charges can stack up quite rapidly, many customers that find themselves frequently being charged roaming fees wonder how they can avoid them. The first step in this process is to identify your networks native coverage area and find out where you are using your phone outside of that area. If you find that you are almost always roaming or that another company has a similar plan for about the same price, but better coverage for you, you may want to consider switching. Still, if you find that you cannot switch carriers for whatever reason, you can also avoid roaming charges by not using your device outside the native coverage area, or by making sure you use it only in a Wi-Fi area when not in the native coverage area.
Now you have an idea about what mobile roaming charges are for and how to avoid incurring them on your monthly cell phone bill.
Click here to compare cell phone plans and save hundreds. Free phone with activation.
Leave a Reply