Telus cuts its international roaming rate

VANCOUVER – Telus announced Monday that it intends to cut roaming rates for its mobile phone customers by up to 60 per cent as part of a strategy to end “bill shock” for its international customers who use their mobile devices overseas.

The Telus cut is to take effect June 27 and is expected to end one of the mobile phone carrier’s largest source of complaints – upset customers who phone the mobile carrier when they discover huge roaming charges in their monthly bill.

People either stopped using their phones entirely when they travelled out of fear of receiving big bills or were upset when they received their bills if they had not bought a roaming package in advance, Brent Johnston, vice-president of mobility marketing at Telus, said in an interview.

He said the new rates, coupled with changes already in place – including rate plans that have been made clearer and simpler, the ability to unlock phones and use SIM cards when travelling and the ability to use Skype – are expected to end bill shock complaints.

Monday’s announcement comes within days of a report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that identified Canadian wireless carriers as charging the highest rates in the world for sending and receiving wireless data outside their home country. Johnston said he agrees with the conclusion of the OECD report. Telus has been planning the change in roaming rates since November, 2009, he said, when the mobile carrier adopted an advanced wireless technology called HSPA, which is similar to the technology used internationally.

Since then, Telus has negotiated more than 200 agreements with international carriers to reduce roaming charges.

The OECD report listed average roaming rates paid by Canadians at $24.61 US per megabyte of data. Telus intends to lower that rate to $10 in all countries where it has agreements except the United States, where it is $3. The OECD average rate is $9.48 US.

Johnston said Telus has also lowered voice rates. They vary according to the agreements negotiated in each country, but average $1.50 a minute in Western Europe, Mexico and Oceania and $2.50 a minute in the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, China, India and Africa.