AT&T is making moves north of the border. The U.S. wireless carrier has inked a roaming deal with Rogers Canada that will allow AT&T subscribers to have access to Rogers LTE network when they are travelling. The deal includes major Canadian cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Montreal. Travelers to Canada don’t have to give up their precious LTE data connections now, as long as they are an AT&T Mobility customer.
The new LTE roaming agreement doesn’t come cheap. AT&T customers will have to choose from one of three roaming plans, called Data Global Add-On packages. These offer “discounted” rates that include over 150 countries worldwide. Unfortunately, the plans don’t get you much data. $30 per month nets you 120 MB of roaming data usage. $60 per month gets you 300 MB, and $120 per month will allow you to use 800 MB of data while travelling abroad. You’re going to run into overages in no time on an LTE network. Have fun with that.
Rogers Wireless is Canada’s largest mobile service provider, with just under 10 million customers at the beginning of 2013. Their headquarters are in Toronto, and their revenues in 2012 were $7.3 billion. Rogers launched its LTE network in July of 2011. The first city they covered was Ottawa, Ontario. They claim that their 4G network speeds are four to five times faster than any other LTE network available in Canada.
AT&T Mobility has around 110 million customers in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. AT&T is now the second largest wireless carrier in the U.S., coming in just behind Verizon. AT&T has their headquarters just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. AT&T has LTE networks with speeds around 6-8 Mbps nationwide, although it is faster in some areas. Theoretically, AT&T’s current LTE speeds could be as fast as 100 Mbps down and 50 Mbps up, but they throttle subscriber’s data speeds in an effort to maintain network efficiency.
The new LTE roaming agreement between AT&T and Rogers is expensive and you’re likely to run in to overage charges if you use it, but it’s there. AT&T is touting the fact that they are the first U.S. wireless carrier to offer international LTE roaming.