Reuters reported on Thursday that Mexican telecommunications giant
America Movil is considering adding some form of international roaming between Mexico and the United States for its postpaid and eventually prepaid plans. America Movil currently owns several of the largest prepaid companies including TracFone, Straight Talk, Net10, Simple Mobile and Page Plus Wireless.
The recent interest in adding international roaming is spurred by
AT&T’s acquisition of two Mexican mobile companies and other offerings like
T-Mobile’s Mobile Without Borders. According to the Reuters article, America Movil is looking to offer this to its Mexican postpaid consumers first for roughly $3 per month, but it has indicated that it also intends to extend the offer to prepaid customers eventually. The roaming addition came with a pledge to invest $6 million in its wireless network in Mexico.
While it’ll likely take some time to get to US prepaid customers and will take a bit more of a push, I think that America Movil would be foolish to not offer international roaming for both countries. To me, it seems like a natural choice for future upgrades–especially if T-Mobile’s Mobile Without Borders takes off as much as I’m sure the company hopes.
As of right now, there have not been any official announcements about the availability of roaming in Mexico or Canada for United States customers. However, I’ll be sure to keep an eye out. Right now, it looks like that’s where a lot of the wireless industry is headed with companies like T-Mobile and AT&T both spreading to offer North American networks rather than a country-specific network.]]>
