According to a new report, AT&T will be dramatically reducing their international data roaming charges beginning July 17. AT&T has previously charged some truly obscene and extortionate fees for this service.
AT&T’s prior data roaming fees, pictured above, are clearly ridiculous, and AT&T was clearly just taking advantage of it’s customers, since their GSM technology in the US is best suited for international roaming. Their new rates for international data roaming are reportedly 2.5-5x lower than before.
While this is ultimately a positive change for AT&T and their customers, I’ll refrain from patting them on the back, as the fees are still much higher than necessary, and AT&T is still hideously screwing people with the obscene price they charge for data (especially if you go over).
With the new roaming plan. You get 2.5 times the data for $25 which is now set at 50MB. At the high end, you get 4x the data, 800MB, for $200. And overages used to cost $5/MB(!!); now it is ‘just’ $10/10MB.
These prices are still remarkably extreme, and while it does cost AT&T significantly more to let you use data on another country’s mobile network, you can be assured that saving internationally travelers money in any way is the lowest item on their agenda. $200 for 800MB of data? I don’t care how you justify it – that’s criminal.
