What Is The Cell Phone Roaming Feature?

Cell phone roaming is when you leave your pre-authorized calling radius with your cell phone package and make a cell phone call “off the network”.

Cellular phone roaming can incur penalties and additional charges on your cell phone bill because your cellular phone company has made a deal with another cell phone company to pick up your signal should you leave your regular network. Generally this happens with smaller cellular phone companies that make deals with companies such as Sprint PCS that has a huge network they built themselves.

You get “piggybacked” off the bigger network if you leave the original network radius, and in this example your smaller cellular phone company would have to pay the Sprint company a fee to keep you connected. Of course, your phones cellular company would then pass at least a portion of these fees down to you.

There are obvious ways of getting out of sticky or expensive roaming fees. For one, you can easily sign on with a company that runs their own large scale cellular phone network.

That means that for the most part you will always be somewhere on the calling grid no matter where you travel. If you’re not sure, just ask. Many companies will be happy to brag about the size of their network.

You can also look for companies that may or may not own their own network, but still offer zero-roaming fees as a selling point on their cell phones and mobile wireless handsets. These companies would rather have you as a customer and swallow the phones fees, to roam, themselves than lose you to a competitor.

You may ask yourself, “Why wouldn’t I just go with a big cellular company and avoid the hassle?” and it is a good question, but there are also some very good answers to it.

For example, smaller companies often fill specific gaps in larger service coverage, called “niche marketing”. These companies may offer specialized services such as phones with prepayment plans or no contract options. Maybe they have made a deal with a cellular phone manufacturer to produce specific types of phones and coverage plans.

Also, if you don't roam often, you may really be able to take advantage of some great deals not offered by the larger cell phone companies. In this case, these smaller companies would be a perfect match.

Also see; cell phone terms.

Author Notes:

Bill Schnarr contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.cell-phones-n-plans.com. A cell phone industry resource that features service plan comparisons, cellular phone reviews and articles.