Rogers’ New $7.99/Day, 50MB U.S. Roaming Rate Now in Effect

In early February, Rogers announced it was set to launch a new pay-per-use U.S. roaming rate for its customers. The $7.99 per day plan with 50MB of data is available as of today. This will also be available to Fido customers (but not Chatr).

How does this new U.S. roaming rate work? As customers cross the border a SMS will inform customers the new $7.99 rate is in effect (Quebec and Newfoundland users must opt-in, one time only). Of course, in order for this roaming data to work you need to enable Data Roaming on your iPhone:

Settings > General > Cellular > Data Roaming > ON

Customers will have access to 50MB of data over a 24 hour period, which the company says is typically double the data their users would normally use domestically.  In order to check data usage, customers text the word “usage” to 3330 once every 10 minutes to get updates when they are on the $7.99 rate.

How did Rogers come up with 50MB per day?

Why 50MB per day? The roaming rate was designed to deliver a lot of data at an affordable price. Currently, more than 99 per cent of our customers use less than 50 MB of data per day when roaming.

According to a national survey commissioned by Rogers with Head Research, the majority of Canadians (60%) who travel to the U.S. have felt disconnected or out of touch without a data plan on their smartphone.

This new data roaming plan is much better than before if you’re desperate for data over a 24 hour period. However, for longer durations in the U.S. there are other options.

Data roaming road warriors with unlocked devices already know about Vancouver-based Roam Mobility’s offerings. For $3.95 per day, users have access to unlimited talk, text and 100MB of data per day. The company recently launched nano SIM cards for the iPhone 5.

If you’re about to roam down in the USA, let us know what options you are going to go with.

P.S. - Like our news? Support the site with a coffee/beer. Or shop with our Amazon link. We use affiliate links when possible--thank you for supporting independent media.