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Comment by bjelkeman-again | Hacker News Reader

> Wireless really is a mess in the US. Europe and Australia have really benefited from choosing one technology (GSM).

How are pricing plans in the US when you are roaming beyond your state? I live in Sweden, where I have a decently priced data and call plan.

However, as soon as I go outside of Sweden, which is a small country (9M people), I have to pay roaming charges. I don't mind so much the call charges, but they want €4/MB ($5.60/MB) for data. Which essentially means that I don't use data roaming at all when out of town unless on Wifi, and I don't travel much in Sweden. Ok, so I can get calls when I travel, but I hardly use the phone for calls, I use it for the data access.

Yes, I can get another SIM, but then I have to tell everyone who may call me that I have changed number for that week, which is not really workable.

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These days, cell phone plans in the US are generally national plans with no domestic roaming charges between states or regions. International roaming still hurts though.

Hej! I'm vacationing in Sweden right now

My iPhone is roaming on telenor. AT&T wants to charge me $19.99 per MB for data roaming here. Needless to say it turned it off and I'm using wifi when available.

That is an outrageous price. Still not as expensive as SMS (per bit of data), but still...

Data roaming in Europe is truly painful. As far as covering a large geographic area, the US carriers sell plans that are convenient to use within the US.

Yes, I can get another SIM, but then I have to tell everyone who may call me that I have changed number for that week, which is not really workable.

Right now I'm travelling in Australia and have settled on getting a local pre-paid SIM with a few GB of data included. I purchased a Skype-online number and am forwarding my US Google Voice number to my Skype number, which I can answer either with Skype running on my phone (Nexus One) or directly with my phone (via Skype forwarding). Additionally I can tether my phone to my netbook via USB or wifi. (The people at Vodafone AU spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out if that was allowed on a pre-paid SIM.)

This is not exactly a simple solution, but is working for me on the road to make relatively cheap calls and I'm always reachable (when I want to be).

I'm not very optimistic about what will happen to my T-mobile bill with AT&T buying them.

Google Voice eliminates the problem of having to tell people to call you at a different number. As I understand it this was Grand Central's motivation for developing the technology in the first place.

Two issues here:

Google Voice is not available outside the US (at least last time I checked)

I don't want to entrust Google more then my searches and (very partially) my email. This rules out, for example, an Android phone or using Chrome.

Oh, snap! [1] Sorry to hear that, and [2] probably wise.

Roaming beyond ones state doesn't change anything. So long as you are on your carriers network you are still fine. I moved from New Jersey to Arizona to Colorado and have had no extra fees.

However when I leave the country they want $10 per MB of data, and $1.29 per minute for calls, and $0.99 for text messages. (This is T-Mobile).

I've heard that AT&T is even worse though :-/

The data roaming on AT&T is actually relatively reasonable, as long as you sign up for their 'Smartphone International Data Package'. You can call to add it to the account before you leave the country, and remove it once you come back, they will even prorate it for partial month.

http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/roaming/affo...

It's 20MB for $25/mo, 50MB for $60/mo, 100MB for $120, and 200MB for $200/mo.

I usually sign up for 200mb plan if I am going somewhere for a week, and don't worry too much about data usage (email, web, yelp app). Turn it few days after I am back, and all roaming charges had chance to post.

> However, as soon as I go outside of Sweden, which is a small country (9M people), I have to pay roaming charges.

This can be problematic for those always on the move (the US has an all-round advantage on domestic market size), but in addition to the 2007 and 2010 roaming regs, the EU is apparently looking at forcing more reasonable data roaming charges across the board.

The reason for this ridiculous prices is quite simple: cellular networks just weren't designed with data roaming in mind.

If you use data roaming, traffic from your device goes back to your home operator and only after that to Internet. I don't know if any significant changes were made in Rel-8 (Rel-10?), but for now that's how it works.

The most reasonable roaming plan I've found is with Japanese carrier Softbank. Last summer they released a ¥1,500/day (~$20) unlimited data plan. While roaming if you use any data, they charge you $20 but you can use as much of it as you want for a 24 hour period.

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