Android Susceptible To Apps That Turn On Roaming 136
fermion writes "If seems that Google's Android and T-Mobile have not learned from the bad experience and wrath Apple incurred with roaming charges on the iPhone. Applications can switch to roaming and data operation without the user's knowledge. Also, according to The Register, there is no way to switch off roaming. Given the backlash that Apple experienced over international roaming charges, one would think that T-Mobile would have built a phone to prevent such unexpected charges." From the wording of the article, the inability to turn off roaming seems to be on a per-application basis; users can evidently disable it globally.
Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. (Score:3, Interesting)
It wasn't just Cingular, it was the company that they were buying the airtime from.
Virgin Mobile skirts the problem by *only* working on Sprint's network. You simply don't have the option to use other networks, even if Sprint doesn't have coverage.
See, each company only has towers in some areas, and you probably actually have less coverage with Virgin than you did with Cingular+roaming.
Maybe you had a regional plan (where you get more minutes for less money, in exchange for less coverage), but I bet that it was a tower issue.
Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. (Score:5, Interesting)
It wasn't that long ago that in the Augusta, Maine area an AT&T or T-Mobile customer was confronted with a carrier that did not negotiate a roaming agreement. They just refused to. So if youmade a call, you got the recording telling you how to give your credit card number and the charges that would apply.
I suspect it had something to do with Augusta being the state capital, and legislators from all over coming into town for the current session. Bringing their phones from Fort Kent, Portland, Boothbay, Farmington, etc., and all the AT&T/TMob subscribers just thinking it would work.
Later on, AT&T and/or TMob got service in the area. This carrier, if it latched onto your phone, would not let it go, especially if you came into town from the North or West. You had to get downtown and power cycle your phone usually, and maybe do that three times.
This humored me when I had a Siemens S46, the dual-mode-phone-from-hell. This carrier kept me on TDMA at all costs, even when I could have gone to GSM and gotten T-Mobile.
But that's another story. Sometimes, roaming isn't so nice. It ought to be different, but then again so many things ought to be different.
Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure. The roaming minutes do represent an ongoing cost though, as opposed to the regular minutes, which are essentially a fixed cost, so part of the high charges is to discourage use.
The U.S. cellular system is a disaster anyway; the FCC should have licensed two networks and then regulated the shit out of them (basically, let them have customer facing operations, but force them to sell bulk rate airtime at or near cost). Instead, we have 3.5 incomplete networks. The huge investment in CDMA was nice for the rest of the world though.
Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, then you almost certainly signed up for a regional plan in order to get more minutes/dollar (versus a national plan)
AT&T will sell you either, so you are basically complaining that they offer the option.
Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. (Score:2, Interesting)
Probably because you spend most of your time in areas with good coverage and think that present prices for minutes are cheap. I am presuming that better regulation could actually result in even lower prices (which I would claim is a good thing for consumers), and better overall coverage.