Understanding Roaming & Long Distance Calls

Any calls that you make that are outside of your calling area, or where your cellular provider has service is considered a roaming call. Any calls made to an area outside of your calling area or outside of where you geographically are when you place the call, will be calculated as a long distance call.

The easiest way to understand this is to look at some real life examples. Let�s use two business partners Lewis and Clark. Lewis and Clark have a regional calling plan that covers New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. They have an office located in New Jersey.

Lewis and Clark are at two different meetings one in Brooklyn, New York the other in Manhattan, New York. Any calls made by either of them to each other are standard calls. Additionally if they were to call the office in New Jersey that would be a standard call as well.

Lewis is having a meeting in Groton, Connecticut, and Clark is at a trade show in Atlantic City. While these calls cover a greater distance they are still standard calls as they are within the regional calling area. If Clark who is in New Jersey were to call a Distributor in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, that would be considered a long distance call. Even though the distance is shorter than his call to Lewis, Pennsylvania is outside of the regional calling area and therefore is billed at the higher long distance rate.

Lewis is now at a meeting in Trenton, New Jersey, Clark meanwhile is visiting the distributor in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. If Lewis were to call Clark it would be considered a long distance call, as Clark is outside of the calling area. If Clark were to call Lewis it would however be a roaming call. Clark is outside of the calling area but Lewis is inside of it so only roaming charges apply.

Clark is still at the distributors office in King of Prussia Pennsylvania, Lewis however is in Washington, DC. If Clark or Lewis were to call each other they would incur both long distance and roaming charges. This is because the originator is outside of the calling areas as is the destination.

In the last example Clark flies to Washington, DC to help Lewis, and calls him from the airport to tell Lewis to come pick him up. This call would only be a roaming call NOT a long distance call. Although the original and destination were outside of the calling area they were in the same area so it�s not a long distance call only a roaming call.

The last thing to remember is you need to be within range of your provider�s network. Most major cities and suburbs are, however some less developed areas are not. So even if you have a nationwide calling plan if you visit an area that your provider doesn�t cover but are able to pick up a different companies signal you will incur roaming and possibly long distance charges. So if you do a lot of traveling to rural or sparsely populated areas be sure to check if the area is covered by your plan.