ROAMIN’ HOLIDAY

Rogers unveils plan to slash roaming fees for customers travelling to the U.S.,

Rogers Communications has unveiled a new roaming program that lets customers access their Canadian wireless plans while travelling in the U.S., a move it says cuts complexity and lowers rates.

Customers of the Toronto-based carrier can make calls and send texts to U.S. and Canadian numbers using their Rogers Share Everything plan. Called Roam Like Home, the initiative also lets customers draw on their data bucket to surf the web, with the service offered for a daily fee of $5 and capped at $50 per month.

A Share Everything plan is required to access the service, which goes into effect Monday. Customers enrol by texting “travel” to number 222.

“The phone thinks it’s in Canada, so everything that applies to being in Canada works,” said Rogers chief ex- ecutive Guy Laurence at a news conference Friday in Toronto. Laurence said a survey commissioned for Rogers shows 49 per cent of Canadians travelling to the U.S. with their devices turn data roaming off because of high costs. He said Roam Like Home is priced competitively, has no complicated sign-up process, does not require a SIM card change when travelling and lets users retain their home number in the U.S. Laurence called it a “significant improvement in customer service” that will be followed by other moves as part of the company’s multi-year program to build goodwill among consumers and reduce Rogers’ high rate of customer churn. Rogers already offers its customers U.S. roaming for $7.99 a day thanks to a reciprocal roaming deal with AT&T that it says allows lower data, text and voice rates.

Laurence said Roam Like Home consolidates voice, text and data into a single bundle and is based on a proprietary set of technologies enabling seamless local and international billing.

He said Rogers could ultimately offer Roam Like Home to customers in Europe and elsewhere if pricing can be worked out with international carriers.