I was doing some mousing around on Digcel's website recently and saw that they'd gotten rid of their Roam Like You're Home packages and replaced them with simple roaming bundles... highest being 1 GB in size and allowed access to data in 28 countries (Digicel Caribbean, Central America + USA, Canada and the UK). I thought it was a brilliant idea and a fantastic way to leverage the scale Digicel has in the region. Needless to say I was more than sure that the competition, FLOW, couldn't have outdone Digicel on that front... That was until I went to Top up on FLOW's online portal and saw this...
Immediately, this caught my eye....
My last experience with roaming with FLOW admittedly wasn't bad at all... my only gripes were the megre data plans and the restriction to 3G data only. It served all my needs really... I could even watch a live stream on it too but, of course, 4000 JMD was too much for just 500 MB for a 6 day trip. So, of course, this sent me digging..... all the way to a FAQ posted on FLOW Dominica's website. In such, it explained that "TravelPass is a new mobile data plan that allows customers to purchase 500MB of data that can be used in 47 countries around the world, for a 7-day validity period. Travel abroad while paying the cheapest data rates enables subscribers to stay connected with their world." I was shocked. What floored me even more so was the fact that it was data up to LTE speed meaning FLOW Jamaica customers can use AT&T's LTE network and (as of recent) T-Mobile's LTE network in the US as well as Rogers, Bell & Telus' LTE networks in Canada but it doesn't stop there... Thanks to a new agreement signed between CWC and Vodafone (and Liberty Global's joint venture in the Netherlands with Vodafone as well), I for instance will be able to roam on Vodafone LTE networks in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Malta, Ireland and even Turkey with a 500 MB tariff for $1950 JAMAICAN DOLLARS.... WITH UNLIMITED ******* ROLLOVER. But wait... hidden within the FAQ was a them offering a trial feature called 'FLOW Data' (a very, VERY generic name for something quite unlike what we've seen in the Caribbean IMO at least). Essentially, what 'FLOW Data' does is it allows you to use your local mobile data allotment across EVERY SINGLE FLOW MARKET FREE OF COST. NO ROAMING PLAN NEEDED... JUST GO... Even though the trial is to end on August 31, 2017, FLOW specifically stated that it 'may' be made permanent given the user feedback of random users.
I honestly don't understand how this plan hasn't been made known to the wider public.... This is literally what I've been begging for from BOTH operators for many years. This is the kind of leveraging of scale and bargaining power I've been dying to see both operators utilize. All the bricks are being laid for us, the people of the Caribbean, to finally experience first world telecoms experiences from BOTH operators. I can't WAIT to try this new plan and whatever other 'TravelPass' plans they release hereafter. What do you all think?