Verizon Wireless slashes roaming rates in Canada, Mexico, though falls short of T-Mobile US promo
Verizon Wireless updated its international roaming options on the heels of major revamps from rivals.
Verizon Wireless said that for $5 per month customers can now call Mexico and Canada for no additional per-minute fees, with calling minutes deducted from their current plans. The offer is also available to its branded prepaid customers.
Customers traveling to Canada and Mexico can now receive 500 calling minutes, 500 sent text messages and unlimited received text messages, and 1 gigabyte of data for $25 per line. Customers can purchase additional data for $20 per 1 GB. The carrier is also continuing to offer a pay-as-you-go roaming option that is priced at 99 cents per minute for calls and $2.05 per megabyte for data access.
Verizon Wireless pricing for roaming to 140 additional countries remains at $40 per line for 100 calling minutes, 100 sent text messages and unlimited received text messages. Customers can also add 100 MB of data for $25.
T-Mobile US earlier this month rolled out its “Mobile without Borders” offer that allows postpaid and prepaid customers to place calls, send text messages and access data services in Canada and Mexico by tapping into their current rate plans at no extra cost. The data access includes LTE speeds where available, and customers can also place calls from the U.S. to all numbers in Canada and Mexico for no extra cost.
T-Mobile US continues to offer postpaid customers unlimited text messaging, access to low-speed data and calling at 20 cents per minute across more than 120 countries for no additional charge. That plan also allowed customers to tag on higher-speed data access buckets at 3G or LTE speeds beginning at $15.
Sprint also recently updated its international roaming options that allow for free access to low-speed data access and messaging while traveling in a number of foreign markets, including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Spain, Chile, Costa Rica, Panama, Germany and the U.K.
The updates follow moves by AT&T to bolster its presence in Mexico. The carrier earlier this year spent $4.4 billion acquiring a pair of mobile operators in Mexico, and last month said it plans to invest $3 billion to expand “high-speed, mobile Internet service” to 100 million people in Mexico by the end of 2018. AT&T has said it plans to offer what it called the first-ever North American mobile service area tapping into its own U.S.-based network and newly acquired assets. AT&T said the combined networks would cover more than 400 million potential customers.
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