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AT&T Wireless is gouging customers on international roaming charges

AT&T Wireless is gouging customers. Why do we have to accept this?

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I've written before about AT&T Wireless' terrible international roaming rates for the iPhone. Well, imagine my surprise to discover that its roaming rates for its wireless cards is even worse. How much worse? Consider the bill I received from AT&T today:

(Credit: Matt Asay)

Yes, that's really $1520.76 for one month's usage of my wireless card. But the shocking thing is that $1450.19 of it came from using the card for under three hours to pull down a total of 96 megabytes of data. That's roughly $15 per megabyte. What a bargain!

Given that my calling plan covers the US and Canada, I assumed my data plan would, too. Nope. I pay $59.99 per month for an "unlimited" data plan on my wireless card. It's surprising just how limited that "unlimited" plan is.

AT&T Wireless is gouging its customers (and no, I'm not the only one - this hapless fellow got dinged $6,000 by AT&T for using his phone in Mexico, while this iPhone user got hit with $3,000). $1,450 for a 96 megabytes is unconscionable. It bears no rational relation to AT&T's own costs of delivering the service.

UPDATE: TechCrunch has data that indicates AT&T's text messaging rates aren't so great, either. How about $1,310 per megabyte?

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