Rogers’ Laurence deals with top customer problem — roaming

With Rogers Communications Inc. focusing on improving its relationship with and reputation among customers, Friday's announcement of a $5-a-day roaming plan in the United States gets to the heart of what CEO Guy Laurence said was the biggest issue among Rogers' wireless subscribers when he joined the company. During the launch Friday, Laurence was asked about whether the move had to do with customer anger about extremely high roaming bills some have been saddled with in the past. “I heard that kind of story loud and clear when I joined the company. … This was almost front and centre the No. 1 issue that kind of got thrown at me,” he responded. Laurence said the initiative was part of Rogers’ ongoing effort to improve its customer service. “This is the first step of a whole series of initiatives that we will roll out over the coming months and … years to improve the customer services that we provide to our customers,” he explained. With the new plan, for $5 a day, customers of Rogers’ “Share Everything” plans using “Roam Like Home” can use voice, text and data from their Canadian plan while travelling in the United States, Rogers said, starting on Nov. 10. It added that, for those on extended stays in the U.S., it will add a maximum of $50 to users' monthly bills for U.S. roaming. Phillip Huang, a telecom analyst with Barclays Capital, said in a research note Monday that the impact of the new roaming prices on Rogers is “not immaterial, but should be gradual.” He noted that the $5 price is 38 per cent lower than Rogers’ existing U.S. roaming plan, which costs $7.99 a day for 50 MB of data. He estimated that Rogers, which gets about $250 million year from U.S. roaming, will lose $35 to $40 million, or around 0.5 per cent of its postpaid average revenue per user, due to the re-pricing. Huang said “the impact will grow as adoption of Share Everything Plans continues to increase,” though he noted that estimate doesn’t include any potential increases in roaming usage or “faster migration” to the Share Everything plans. Rogers said in a press release that a survey found almost half of Canadians switch off their phone when they go the U.S., and Laurence said there is “an almost primeval fear of roaming when you leave Canada and go down to the U.S.” “Interestingly, 11.5 million Canadians would love to use their mobile phone when they go the U.S., but they’re just too scared to, because they’re confused. They think it could be too expensive,” he said. It is “an important move” for Rogers, Iain Grant, a telecom analyst with the SeaBoard Group, said in an email. He said “previous plans were complex, hard to subscribe to, not well publicized,” and as a result “we had horror stories" of expensive bills from people returning from abroad. Laurence also said the options Canadian carriers have been offering their customers for U.S. roaming are too hard to understand. “There are some 80 plans for Canadians to choose from when they go down to the U.S. across all of the operators, so no wonder they are confused,” he said. Grant said that for trips more three days, a $15 unlimited U.S. roaming plan offered by Wind Mobile would be a better option. Last year, the CRTC’s wireless code capped international roaming data charges at $100 a month. Rogers' new service is available for customers of Rogers’ Share Everything plans, which allow customers to share data, voice, text, call display and voicemail services across 10 devices. The Wire Report reported last year that companies like Rogers, BCE Inc. and Telus Corp. were putting increasing emphasis on their shareable wireless plans, and quoted John Boynton, then Rogers’ executive vice-president and chief marketing officer, as saying that “eventually everything will be part of Share Everything,” including connected devices like cars. Laurence said Friday that Rogers made the deal available only to its Share Everything customers because “Share Everything is our most popular plan by a long way. In fact, most customers signing up to Rogers are signing up to Share Everything. Most customers who are migrating plans are going to Share Everything.” “Because of the complexity of actually developing this, it made sense to put it on that plan,” he said, noting that the company doesn’t know yet whether it will extend the service to customers on other plans or customers of its Fido brand. “We had to get this up and running. We started work on this in February." Huang said in his note that share plans are generally higher-priced than legacy plans, and that “only” around 30 per cent of Rogers’ postpaid customers are eligible for the new plan, “although that percentage is rising every day.” Putting the new roaming plan in place involved Rogers developing the in-house technology the service uses, Laurence said. “Developing this technology, where basically the phone thinks it's in Canada but it’s actually somewhere else, took a lot of work,” he said, noting that carriers in Europe have developed similar technology. He said the new arrangement was possible because the Rogers reached “a great deal with AT&T,” extending an “existing relationship” Rogers had with the U.S. carrier. Laurence did not offer any more details on the deal, saying that “the cost is my problem. It’s not the customers’ problem.” Because the U.S. is the top travel destination for Canadians, Rogers will “focus on the U.S. and getting that right,” he said in response to a question about extending the deal to other countries. “There’s a lot of countries out there apart from the U.S., but my view was let’s get this right and then figure out what we do next.” Following the announcement, competitors Bell and Telus responded Friday on Twitter to comments about Rogers' new U.S. roaming plan. In response to a social network user named Dean Lubaki, who said he was switching his wireless service from Bell to Rogers, the Bell Support Twitter account asked: "How come Dean? Can we help to change your mind?" Lubaki responded: "that's impossible! They just launched a 5$ per day roaming plan!" In turn, Bell Support posted: "That's cool. Hopefully we'll launch something similar in the future and you reconsider. Let us know what you decide." Meanwhile, a user calling themselves The Last Legit posted a Twitter question to Telus about Rogers' new roaming plan: "Are you guys going to have something similar?" The account called TELUS Support replied, "We'll pass the idea on," and provided a link to the Telus website where it said the user could see "loads of roaming options." Another user, called Wyatt Weatherson, posted on Twitter: "Telus is super expensive for anything decent in the US." TELUS Support replied: "I'll pass your message along to our pricing team." Huang said Monday it’s “too early to tell” whether either company will respond to Rogers’ plan with similar discounts. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and reporting and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Rogers’ Laurence deals with top customer problem — roaming

News | 11/07/2014 10:09 pm EST

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