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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.

17 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 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.

  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.

  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: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.

  6. 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.