Rogers roaming winning fans, sales
Rivals only recently have begun to push into market
Toronto • For Rogers Communications Inc., Canada’s largest wireless carrier, the mobile roaming plan it calls “Roam Like Home” is turning some of its fervent haters into evangelists. A tweet posted last month sums it up: “Dear Rogers, I know we don’t always get along, but Roam Like Home is the best.”
Chief executive Guy Laurence told reporters in April that those enrolled in Roam Like Home, which allows its top-tier subscribers to pay a daily fee of either a $5 or $10 to use their phones in 75 countries as they do at home, were using the Internet five times as much while in the U.S. than those who weren’t. The early success of signing up one million people for U.S. travel in the first six months prompted Laurence to say: “We have broken the fear of roaming, once and for all.” Since then, the company has enrolled one million or so more and, in April, expanded the program to 35 European countries and, last month, expanded it to 40 countries in the Caribbean, Mexico and South and Central America in time for winter and the high travel season.
These initial results suggest Canadians want to travel with cellphones and tablets in tow.
According to a Nielsen survey, nine of 10 Canadians would use their devices in Europe to stay in touch with family, send emails or search digital maps if it wasn’t for the hefty price tag to do so or fear of not knowing how big the cost will be. But, in recent years, Rogers has seen these concerns translate to declining sales from roaming.
Now, with the increase in both unique users and activity on Roam Like Home, the Toronto-based company is beginning to see the rate of decline in roaming revenues decelerate.
Roaming is still a minuscule part of sales for Rogers and other companies, but the market is growing fast.
Prices for calling, texting and using data overseas continue to fall in Canada and in other countries, a trend that is propelling increased data usage on faster Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks. According to a report by U.K.-based digital market research specialists Juniper Research, mobile roaming will be worth an estimated $90 billion for wireless operators across the globe by 2018, a dramatic jump from the $57 billion that was generated in 2014. By then, mobile roaming will balloon to account for an estimated eight per cent of total billed revenues.
“(Roam Like Home) is a reason why customers come to Rogers and stay,” Raj Doshi, the company’s executive vicepresident of wireless services, said in an interview. “Why do we believe that a customer would want to change their habits when they are out- side the country? They don’t think of their buckets by day or by week. That was the crux of the design. We tried to make it simple.”
Until relatively recently, Rogers has had — in the words of the David Fuller, president of Consumer and Small Business Solutions for rival Telus Corp. — “a virtual roaming monopoly.”
Until late 2009, Telus and BCE Inc.’ s Bell operated a CDMA cellular network, which had limited worldwide popularity. Rogers, meanwhile, was using the more widely deployed and faster HSPA technology. Now Telus and Bell also have HSPA.
“Prior to offering HSPA (in late 2009) service we were not operating on the standard most of the world was on,” Fuller said in a emailed statement. “With HSPA we swept that away and for the first time, we were able to go out and start negotiating reciprocal roaming agreements with hundreds of carriers around the world. We’ve made real changes based on customer input.”
For Rogers customers the catch is to access Roam Like Home, people need to subscribe to Rogers top-tier Share Everything plan. Clients who aren’t, but want to stay connected, will have to purchase a travel pack, as will Share Everything customers who are visiting a region that isn’t currently included in Roam Like Home, such as Asia, or Africa. The plan won’t work for people at sea on a cruise ship, but does at ports in eligible countries. A minute of voice costs $4 on a cruise and a megabyte of data $15, according to rates on the company’s site.
In July, Telus launched a roaming package it calls Easy Roam for U.S. travel that charges $7 per day to for access to voice minutes, text messages and data allotment included as a part of their existing rate plan. Unlike the restrictive terms of Roam Like Home, Easy Roam is available to most Telus subscribers on a monthly contract. Subscribers who are travelling overseas will need to either purchase an add-on package or pay for what they use. Since 2011, Telus says it has reduced its pay-per-use rates by up to 80 per cent.
This is the reason why Rogers has been aggressive in its efforts to entice its subscribers to turn on and use their cellphone when they travel outside Canada instead of turning their device to airplane mode and using a free Wi-Fi connection at a local coffee shop, or purchasing a SIM card from a local operator.
“Rogers had the most to lose cause, historically, it had a higher proportion of its average revenue per user coming from roaming versus Telus and Bell,” said Desjardins Securities analyst Maher Yaghi. “By creating these packages, they are trying to win the affection of the consumer — and not necessarily to make money.” He doesn’t monitor international roaming as closely as he used to because it’s such a small source of sales.
Bell, conversely, has opted to offer its wireless subscribers passes and bundles based on destination, length of time away and if someone plans to make calls, send text messages or browse the web. It covers more than 220 countries with any of its packages, which are valid for 30 days and range from an additional charge of $20 to as much as $95. Gauging how much you’ll use is necessary to avoid pricey overages in these plans.
“It’s a competitive market in roaming. We’ve lowered our U.S. roaming rates by 50 per cent,” George Cope, chief executive at BCE , said during the company’s August quarterly earnings call in response to a question. “We’ve not repriced to the significant levels some of our competitors have. Given our market share results, clearly, our customers think what we’re doing now for roaming in the U.S. is meeting their requirements.”