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Android Susceptible To Apps That Turn On Roaming

Posted by timothy on from the would-love-to-see-an-actual-toggle-switch dept.

fermion writes "If seems that Google's Android and T-Mobile have not learned from the bad experience and wrath Apple incurred with roaming charges on the iPhone. Applications can switch to roaming and data operation without the user's knowledge. Also, according to The Register, there is no way to switch off roaming. Given the backlash that Apple experienced over international roaming charges, one would think that T-Mobile would have built a phone to prevent such unexpected charges." From the wording of the article, the inability to turn off roaming seems to be on a per-application basis; users can evidently disable it globally.

26 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Solution: by Spazztastic · · Score: 5, Funny

    When traveling, only do so in a faraday cage.

    --
    Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
  2. Roaming charges are ridiculous. by theaveng · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What reasonable explanation can exist for charging me an extra 50 cents per minute, just because I made a call from Maryland instead of Pennsylvania? I can't think of any. Cingular used to do that to me, but now I use Virgin Mobile which did away with that nonsense (I pay a flat 18 cents anywhere in the U.S.). That's how all cellphones should operate.

    --
    FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
    1. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by geekmux · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What reasonable explanation can exist for charging me an extra 50 cents per minute, just because I made a call from Maryland instead of Pennsylvania? I can't think of any. Cingular used to do that to me, but now I use Virgin Mobile which did away with that nonsense (I pay a flat 18 cents anywhere in the U.S.). That's how all cellphones should operate.

      Ah, to summarize with maximum efficiency negating your "reasonable" request for an answer: Because they can.

    2. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by maxume · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It wasn't just Cingular, it was the company that they were buying the airtime from.

      Virgin Mobile skirts the problem by *only* working on Sprint's network. You simply don't have the option to use other networks, even if Sprint doesn't have coverage.

      See, each company only has towers in some areas, and you probably actually have less coverage with Virgin than you did with Cingular+roaming.

      Maybe you had a regional plan (where you get more minutes for less money, in exchange for less coverage), but I bet that it was a tower issue.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    3. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by Sockatume · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think the whole "it's expensive to buy airtime from our roaming partners" thing is a crock of shit. If they all charge eachother some ridiculous rate for roaming onto their network, and that is passed straight to the end consumer, then it's price fixing. It was more transparently stupid here in Europe when you were roaming from T-Mobile UK to T-Mobile Germany and being charged through the nose for roaming onto a network that belongs to the same parent company. There was no excuse along the lines of "we charge ourselves a lot for roaming", so ultimately it was very easy for the parliment to demand a drop in roaming fees and, when the companies disregarded this, legislate a maximum fee.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    4. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by thrillseeker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ah, but this isn't capitalism - this is regulations, bught and paid for, allowing avoidance of capitalism. Capitalism allows competition - we have given competition away (ok, ok - sold out cheap) in exchange of supposed expensive infrastructure.

    5. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by RingDev · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It costs millions to build and maintain a tower.

      When you go into roaming, you are using your provider's competitor's network. The competition wants to make money to pay for their tower, and you are not their customer, so they are going to bill your provider an arm an a leg for access, and your provider will pass those costs on to you.

      Even more so, the more the competition charges for roaming calls, the more upset you will be with your provider, and if you need to go into roaming often enough, you will be more likely to leave your provider and join up with the very competitor that had been billing 50 cents a minute for the same call you are now making for 10 cents a minute.

      Although, with all the new peering and leasing agreements going on, we'll likely see less and less of roaming fees from any provider that owns some amount of their own towers.

      -Rick

      --
      "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
    6. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by rickb928 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It wasn't that long ago that in the Augusta, Maine area an AT&T or T-Mobile customer was confronted with a carrier that did not negotiate a roaming agreement. They just refused to. So if youmade a call, you got the recording telling you how to give your credit card number and the charges that would apply.

      I suspect it had something to do with Augusta being the state capital, and legislators from all over coming into town for the current session. Bringing their phones from Fort Kent, Portland, Boothbay, Farmington, etc., and all the AT&T/TMob subscribers just thinking it would work.

      Later on, AT&T and/or TMob got service in the area. This carrier, if it latched onto your phone, would not let it go, especially if you came into town from the North or West. You had to get downtown and power cycle your phone usually, and maybe do that three times.

      This humored me when I had a Siemens S46, the dual-mode-phone-from-hell. This carrier kept me on TDMA at all costs, even when I could have gone to GSM and gotten T-Mobile.

      But that's another story. Sometimes, roaming isn't so nice. It ought to be different, but then again so many things ought to be different.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    7. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by maxume · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sure. The roaming minutes do represent an ongoing cost though, as opposed to the regular minutes, which are essentially a fixed cost, so part of the high charges is to discourage use.

      The U.S. cellular system is a disaster anyway; the FCC should have licensed two networks and then regulated the shit out of them (basically, let them have customer facing operations, but force them to sell bulk rate airtime at or near cost). Instead, we have 3.5 incomplete networks. The huge investment in CDMA was nice for the rest of the world though.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    8. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by maxume · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Okay, then you almost certainly signed up for a regional plan in order to get more minutes/dollar (versus a national plan)

      AT&T will sell you either, so you are basically complaining that they offer the option.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    9. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It costs millions to build and maintain a tower.

      Sure, if you maintain it for 27 centuries.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    10. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by Lumpy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What reasonable explanation can exist for charging me an extra 50 cents per minute, just because I made a call from Maryland instead of Pennsylvania? I can't think of any.

      I can... it makes them RICHER.

      Your cellphone company hates you and wants to rob you blind. When you understand that fact, you will have a far better understand of how Corporations do business.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    11. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by Serious+Callers+Only · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ah, but this isn't capitalism - this is regulations, bught and paid for, allowing avoidance of capitalism. Capitalism allows competition - we have given competition away (ok, ok - sold out cheap) in exchange of supposed expensive infrastructure.

      Truly free capitalism degenerates pretty quickly into monopolies and cartels (which are illegal for a reason). Once someone has a stranglehold on the market it does not allow competition as it is not in the interests of incumbents to give up power, and they have the means to easily crush any smaller companies (price fixing, bribery, coercion, subsidies below cost until the competitor goes under, etc etc).

      The only way to ensure that doesn't happen is to introduce the regulations that you affect to despise.

    12. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by maxume · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Probably because you spend most of your time in areas with good coverage and think that present prices for minutes are cheap. I am presuming that better regulation could actually result in even lower prices (which I would claim is a good thing for consumers), and better overall coverage.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    13. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by sunderland56 · · Score: 2, Informative

      On the T-Mobile Android data plan, there are no roaming charges in the USA.

      Unlimited data per month, too - unlike that other phone that begins with 'i'.

    14. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by lysergic.acid · · Score: 2, Informative

      um, i never said it wasn't viable. the telecoms can do whatever they want because they have a natural monopoly (oligopoly in some places, but in practice there's not much difference) and telecommunications is a service with inelastic demand. these days a cellphone is almost a basic necessity if you live in most places. but their making buttloads of cash doesn't change the fact that:

      • SMS messages cost 10~15 cents each (in the U.S.) while it's just a stripped down proprietary version of e-mails or IMs. no one in their right mind would charge/pay to send and to receive text messages over the internet.
      • cellphone carriers are still charging mid-90's prices for mobile internet access, and even charging per MB for data transfer still.
      • roaming & long-distance charges make no sense whatsoever in the age of modern digital communications.

      we have the technology and resources to deploy a nationwide public wireless broadband network. and with ubiquitous wireless coverage, VoIP would eliminate the need for cellphone carriers and their ridiculous rates & terms. paying up the ass to use cellular networks and their 3 Mbps asymmetric EV-DO connections is just stupid when there are alternatives that can provide almost 22x the speed with symmetric upstream/downstream speeds.

      but maybe you're right. maybe we should just wait for 3G to reach the masses so that everyone can enjoy the decade-old technology (yes, EVDO was developed in 1999). and if you think bringing up how much worse things were in the past changes the fact that telecoms are still impeding technological progress, then let me just say that i think Alabama is a shining beacon of progress because black people are no longer being lynched there.

  3. Not true, marketplace apps tell exactly info by LingNoi · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sounds like BS to me..

    1) go here: http://tmobile.modeaondemand.com/htc/g1/
    2) click Simulation
    3) Click the arrow icon on the screen to the right
    4) click market
    5) select any app
    6) click install

    Look at this screen. It tells you exactly what the app does.

    1. Re:Not true, marketplace apps tell exactly info by LingNoi · · Score: 2, Informative

      I can only assume here, but it's probably auto generated by looking at what parts of the android API your program accesses.

  4. Bad summary by jettoblack · · Score: 5, Informative

    The problem is that the Android OS doesn't strictly enforce its global "Disable Data Roaming" option. Apps are supposed to respect this setting but some do not, thus a user who thinks it is disabled can still end up with $thousands in international data fees.

    1. Re:Bad summary by Ilgaz · · Score: 3, Informative

      It doesn't give ANY credibility to Apple.

      J2ME security model, Symbian Security model which nears a billion installed base wouldn't do a mistake like that and yet there is no "Nokia Store" prison or "Sun Store" lock in.

      Here is Symbian security model (295K pdf) http://www.symbian.com/files/rx/file3202.pdf

      J2ME security (Symbian also carries J2ME) http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/articles/permissions/

      It can't be used as excuse for Apple draconian policies. Apple's security policy on iPhone is: Nobody should never, ever compete with their iTunes on device.

  5. Re:There is a toggle for roaming (just checked) by LingNoi · · Score: 2, Informative

    T-Mobile has issued an official response (posted in full after the break) to clear things up, and the gist of it is this: for users with a bone stock G1, the "Off" selection in data roaming should work fine, but third-party applications can essentially override this command and wreak havoc on one's phone bill. From the horse's mouth: "Some third-party applications available for download on Android Market require access to the internet and have the ability to turn on data roaming when in use. Customers are informed whether an application will use this feature prior to downloading, but should also be aware when traveling outside the country."

    So in short, disable data roaming and don't use the apps which access your internet.

  6. Thanks for the explanation by Chrisq · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This looks like a platform flaw to me.

    1. Re:Thanks for the explanation by Ilgaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They should buy a Symbian S60 or even a modern J2ME handset and see how strict you gotta be on communications network which user pays for bytes. Google embraced and extended J2ME but passed its sandbox/security model?

      Everyone keeps hating Symbian and J2ME security model but it seems as the only way to make best of both open competition and security. Nokia and others learned it very hard and expensive way.

  7. Re:If they couldn't... they'd still bitch... by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No this is not the way things should work. The "roaming disabled" should be like a firewall. It should be possible to add exceptions for explicit applications, and those apps could recommend you did this during install - but it should be up to you.

  8. Re:If they couldn't... they'd still bitch... by Sockatume · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'd say that a program that disregards your preferences is already falling short of using the full functionality of the phone.

    --
    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  9. Uh, no. by Kazin · · Score: 2, Informative

    From what I can tell, this is a case of people not really knowing what they're talking about. There is no documented way to turn on this setting from in an application. And just because an app has permission to use the internet does not say it can change this roaming setting.

    Some reference: http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/ee7bc6309c865672/77003d32c992752c/