Android Susceptible To Apps That Turn On Roaming

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.

Comments

Solution:

[Spazztastic]

When traveling, only do so in a faraday cage.

Roaming charges are ridiculous.

[theaveng]

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.

Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous.

[geekmux]

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.

Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous.

[Sockatume]

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.

Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous.

[thrillseeker]

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.

Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous.

[rickb928]

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.

Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous.

[Serious Callers Only]

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.

Not true, marketplace apps tell exactly info

[LingNoi]

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.

Bad summary

[jettoblack]

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.

Re:If they couldn't... they'd still bitch...

[Chrisq]

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.