The IT Nerd

One of the things that popped up on my Twitter client today was this Tweet:

Bell cuts mobile roaming prices for Bermuda and most Caribbean islands. http://t.co/jYnYbaU7ZU

— Media Relations (@Bell_News) October 15, 2013

I dug deeper and here are the highlights. Starting on October 16, Bell customers travelling to Aruba, Antigua, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos, St. Barts, St. Martin, St. Lucia among other destinations in the Caribbean will have lower roaming rates. Here’s the key points from the press release:

Effective tomorrow, both existing Bell customers and new customers travelling to popular sun destinations including Aruba, Antigua, Bermuda, Cayman Islands,Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos, St. Barts, St. Martin, St. Lucia and more can take advantage of these reduced consumer roaming packages.

$50 Zone 1 30-day Travel Bundle
Travellers to Bermuda and most Caribbean Islands can now take advantage of the all-in-one $50 Zone 1 travel bundle, which offers 25 Megabytes (MB) of Internet and other data access, 50 anytime minutes for all local calls or back to Canada, and 50 sent and unlimited incoming text messages. This is a 47% price reduction from the previous price of $95 for the all-in-one bundle.

30-day Travel Add-ons
Travel add-ons give customers the option of taking just 1 or 2 mobile services and in large quantities. Customers travelling to Bermuda or the Caribbean islands can now purchase 100 MB of data for $75 – formerly $125 for 50 MB, an effective price reduction of 70%. The voice travel add-on is cut by half to $50 for 100 anytime minutes for local calls or back to Canada. Text messaging is now $30 for 200 sent and unlimited incoming text messages, a cost reduction of 40%.

Customers can choose the plans from Bell self serve on their smartphones or by calling 1-800-667-ROAM (7626) while they travel. To learn more, please visitBell.ca/Travel.

This is a decent start, but it’s still pretty pricey. One could suspect that Bell could do better if they chose to or were forced to. Seeing as the CRTC considering regulation of roaming fees, and there’s a throne speech coming tomorrow from the Canadian Government that is rumored to contain action in terms of lower cell phone rates, the latter might happen soon.

This entry was posted on October 15, 2013 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Bell. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.