Roaming crap.
 

No, seriously, what sort of syndicate this Roaming thing is? And even if I could call and say Hi and then Bye but, apparently, data transmission is Golden. Dafuk?

Carriers charging each other exorbitant interconnect fees so they reap a huge reward from travellers.

It's a worldwide problem.

It was about to be cancelled in 2015 in EU, then shit got postponed due to EU's will to put the expenses on operators, but damn, the data transmission CAN FUCKING NOT be this expensive - now it feels like they're literally lifting GIGs of data in the air manually.

Yeah, they were supposed to do something here too. An election got in the way so as a result we got sms warnings about limits and other crap like that.

There are ways to save money while roaming. Call your home-based carrier and tell them you are travelling and ask for a special deal.

You can also take advantage of tons of wifi coverage. If you're with Bell for example you can use Wifi anywhere in Canada for free, and of course free wifi everywhere else. Use Skype or Face time to make calls instead of phone calls and save a ton.

Right, in EU you can buy a 1GB roaming pack available via select operators, works fine for a 2-4 day trip. Calling is not a super issue, but the data. WiFi varies from country to country in EU, so I can't even tell how well established is that when I travel for the first time.

When I travel for more than a couple of days I get a local pre-paid card with data and put the sim in a second phone (I kept an old iPhone for this purpose).
:2 cents::thumbsup

Right on, but the hassle.

True, but I save the headache and the ass-ripping invoice.

Correct. I do all that too. But the question was DAFUK they keep playing this game?

Well, I guess that as long as people keep paying... there's no reason to stop playing this game.

Finally our carrier in Canada has opened up a plan called "Roam like home" where you pay a set fee per day and use your phone like you would back home. I was just in EU and I paid $10 a day for unlimited talk, text and data. It was excellent not being cut off from shit. It's $5 per day in the states.

The whole roaming ripoff is about to get disrupted. Hard.

In the interim grab a local sim card and give skiproaming.com a try.

That is still expensive, like full month of unlimited everything (well ok, gigs are limited to a few, but that is more than enough for most) in normal circumstances in EU.