@wvice1, the addon that you're looking for is Rogers Roam Like Home:
https://www.rogers.com/mobility/roaming
Type in United Kingdom as the destination. The Roam Like Home charge is $15.00 / day in Canadian.
The page also shows the pay per use rates.
Rogers Roam Like Home isn't really an addon per se. Its more a case of allowing your phone to access out of country cell phone networks. Be advised that Roam Like Home draws a considerable number of complaints in the forum. All you have to do is read back thru the pages to see this. Those complaints are mainly due to how today's cell phones operate. They can use numerous transmit/receive instances during the day as various cell phone applications call home, without the user necessarily knowing and understanding that. The end result is that you can have days where you didn't send or receive any messages, no calls in or out and no data usage either, and yet, the day will be charged due to some application running in the background, connecting to an out of country cell tower. While you're at home in Canada, that's not a big deal, as your data allowance per month is probably more than the cell phone uses in a month, but, once you're out of country, this becomes a cost issue due to the accumulation of Roam Like Home daily charges, arising from those numerous individual cell tower connections. Its not an issue of using up a huge amount of data or making any voice calls, its an issue of some applications doing what their designed to do, ie: ET call home......
Personal opinion, advise your daughter to buy a UK or European SIM card. She can do that on arrival in the UK at the airport, or at a shop that is near where she is staying, or purchase it prior to leaving Canada. I suspect that buying a sim card will be cheaper in town, in the UK, versus buying it at the airport.
Does your daughters phone use a sim card or esim? That does matter when it comes to turning off access to foreign cell companies in order to avoid any Rogers Roam Like Home charges. @LordDrakkon would probably have some advice on the esim issue and cell use overseas.
I would cancel Roam Like Home for your current plan, you can always reactivate it at a later date if you wish. It might be shown in the user account page, not sure, or, you would have to chat with Tech Support or send a message to the moderators to cancel your cell phone Roam Like Home capability. That should guarantee that there won't be any surprise Roam Like Home charges. Then just prior to leaving Canada, remove the Rogers Sim card and install the European or UK Sim card on arrival in the UK.
The exchange rate for Euros to Canadian dollars at the present time is: 1 pound sterling = $1.76 Canadian.
So ......
Pounds: = Canadian $:
10 17.62
20 35.25
30 52.87
40 70.50
50 88.12
Take for example purchasing an Orange sim card for the UK. Here's the page:
https://travel.orange.com/en/buy-a-sim/offers/united-kingdom
Select eSim or SIM, and (eSIM) Data Only or Data +Calls + SMS. Selecting SIM results in three choices priced at 39.99, 29.99, or 19.99, all in British Pounds. At the current exchange rate that comes out to:
Pounds: + 20% UK VAT tax: = Canadian $: Max Sim Card Rogers Roam Like Home cost ($15 /day)
usage days for same 14 or 28 # of days including GST
19.99 x 1.2 = 23.99 $ 42.28 14 $237.30
29.99 x 1.2 = 35.99 $ 63.43 14 $237.30
39.99 x 1.2 = 47.99 $ 84.58 28 $420.00 Note: capped at 20 days
($300) per billing cycle
So, looking at the numbers, buying a UK or European SIM card on arrival is significantly cheaper.
If you take a look at those plans, here is what you will see, for the 14 or 28 days shown on the page:
Data: 12Gb, 30 Gb, or 70 GB
Unlimited Calls from the UK to the UK
30 minutes or 120 minutes for calls from the UK to the World
200 or 1000 SMS messages from the UK to the World
Data tethering allowed and unrestricted
Say for the sake of the argument you said, I'm only buying the sim card to call home, what the cost per minute? when you crunch the numbers, here's the result:
Pounds: + 20% UK VAT tax: = Canadian $: divided by 120 or 30 minutes
19.99 x 1.2 = 23.99 $ 42.28 = $1.41 / min (30 min)
29.99 x 1.2 = 35.99 $ 63.43 = $0.52 / min (120 min)
39.99 x 1.2 = 47.99 $ 84.58 = $0.70 / min (120 min)
Rogers has two cell phone long distance calling rates for the UK, the first is if you have a U.S. & International Preferred Rate plan, the second is if you don't have that long distance plan:
U.S. & International Preferred Rate plan = $0.05 / min
Standard Rate = $1.65 / min
The end result is its either more expensive to call you daughter while she in the UK or its considerable cheaper, depending on that U.S. & International Preferred Rate plan. If you have that plan on your cell phone account already, the kicker here is that you're paying an additional $8.00 / month for that. If you already have the U.S. & International Preferred Rate plan, calling your daughter while she's in the U.K. is very cheap. Just have to set up an agreeable time, or she sends you a text message "call me now".....
Fwiw, here's part of the fine print from the details section on this page: https://www.rogers.com/mobility/add-ons#rate-finder
"5. Applies to calls originating in Canada on the Rogers mobile network and terminating outside of Canada in the applicable countries. Rates differ for landline versus mobile terminated calls. Calls originating in Canada and terminating outside the applicable countries associated with the particular add-on charged at standard rates. Mobile Terminating calls are billed by the second (30-second minimum). Airtime charges apply to both landline and mobile terminating calls. Long distance charges are rounded up to the next full minute."
The landline costs can be found here:
https://www.rogers.com/support/home-phone/what-are-the-rates-for-long-distance-add-ons
There are two costs indicated:
Standard (no plan?): $0.10 / min
Whole World Plan: $0.02 / min
International Plus: $0.02 / min
From the following page: https://www.rogers.com/home-phone
The International Plus Long Distance plan for Home Phones is $10 / month.
If you still have a Home phone, that might be useful to keep the calling cost to the U.K. to a minimum.
Ok, hope this provides some food for thought. I used Orange as an example, but, there are others, 02, Vodafone, EE, Three, and others. If you do a little google research you might find plans that are cheaper than the ones that I pointed to.
Fwiw, out of country roaming costs are one of Canadian customers biggest pet peeves, no matter which cell phone company you're looking at. Looks like Rogers charges $15 / day, while Bell and Telus charge $16 / day.
You can buy sim cards from Amazon.ca and probably other distributers. I suspect that it might be cheaper to buy the sim card in the UK, but, I have not done any comparisons between a Canadian distributer and a UK company, looking at the same sim card, and how the purchase price compare between the two.
The one piece of data that I didn't find was the charge to the Orange Sim card when the call originates in Canada. There should be an air time charge, but beyond that I don't believe that there should be any other charges. I might be wrong, but, I didn't come across that info.
Not to forget, hopefully your daughter already knows about this: "Effective January 8, 2025, all Canadian citizens must apply for an Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) to enter or travel through the United Kingdom (UK)"
Here's a link: https://www.gands.com/blog/2024/12/23/what-canadian-travellers-need-to-know-about-the-uks-new-eta/
Here's a link to the UK Government: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/apply-for-an-electronic-travel-authorisation-eta
Hope she has a good trip.
-
550 views
-
0 Likes
-
-
