Does the cellular data toggle switch need to be enabled to roam on various networks? Does it use plan data? Thank you.
In: Technology
A few things need to happen:
1) your phone has to have roaming turned on. It’s 50/50 as to whether or not it’s on by default. Seems to depend on the phone and carrier.
2) The network you want to roam onto has to have a roaming agreement with your primary carrier. The two companies have to do their back office stuff for billing and accounting.
3) Your account with your primary carrier has to allow you to roam. Just because your phone sees the roaming network doesn’t mean you can actually use the network. See #2, because there has to be communication between the roaming network and your primary carrier to decided if you’re allowed to connect. (This doesn’t count for emergency calls to 911, though. If your phone can actually see a carrier, you can dial 911 no matter if you have money in your account or have a roaming agreement or anything).
As far as using plan data/minutes, that’s entirely up to your primary carrier. If I look at my tmobile plan, I have unlimited talk, text, and data as long as I’m on a tmobile network. If I roam onto AT&T (The only other network my gsm iPhone will connect to), I’m limited to about 500MB of data after which my roaming data gets cut off (though I still have unlimited data on a tmobile network). My iPhone has different roaming settings for data and voice. I leave the voice on but turn the data off unless I’m in a bind and need data outside tmobile’s network.
When I lived in Detroit and went over to Windsor in Canada, I would check if I was roaming before making a call. It’s close enough to sometimes get an in network signal. I could call at no charge in done areas yet step just a few feet and there were obstructions that forced a switch to roaming.
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