Travelling soon? Get ready to pay higher cellphone roaming rates

Two of Canada's biggest telecom providers are raising the fees they charge customers when they use their devices outside of Canada.

Starting March 8, Telus will charge customers $14 a day when they roam on their devices in the United States, and $16 a day when they do so internationally. That's an increase from $12 and $15, respectively. Customers of the Telus-owned discount brand Koodo will see a similar fee hike.

Rival Bell is making a similar move starting the following day, raising its U.S. roaming rate from $12 to $13, and going from $15 to $16 internationally. Those  increases will also be in effect at Bell-owned subsidiaries including Virgin Mobile.

There's no indication that Rogers has similar plans to raise roaming rates, but as it stands, customers at Rogers and its flanker brands including Chatr and Fido pay $12 to roam in the U.S. and $15 internationally.

CBC News reached out for comment to all three companies for this story, asking for an explanation for the move.

A spokesperson for Telus said the company needed more time to respond.

Bell cited Statistics Canada data showing that overall wireless prices have declined in the past year, despite "price increases from our suppliers" and "increasing costs to our business," without elaborating.

Rogers outlined the company's roaming rates, but declined comment as to whether they had increased recently or were about to.

Canadians pay some of the highest telecom bills in the world, according to numerous international reports. Multiple federal governments have pressured providers to bring prices down, especially for basic plans with limited data, and while official data shows wireless prices have come down by some metrics, that's not the case for high-end packages.

A recent report by CBC's consumer affairs program Marketplace found that, on average, Canadians pay seven times more for a gigabyte of data than people in Australia, 25 times more than people in Ireland and France, and 1,000 times more than people in Finland.

Wall Communications Inc. publishes an annual report on Canadian telecom services and, while this year's version has not yet been released, on the whole company founder Gerry Wall says the public perception that wireless prices keep going up is unfair, as providers have created many more low-cost plans targeting basic users.

"At the very, very low level — I think you can say it's relatively affordable in Canada," he said. "It's when you get up into sort of the mid-level and the higher-level plans that Canada doesn't look as good."

A service such as roaming is one of those high-level perks, and prices are going up because consumers have shown that they want that service, Wall says.

"When I look at [those companies'] annual reports ... they do point to the fact that that people are traveling a lot more," he said.