International cell phone roaming charges are essentially a form of legalized extortion, designed to severely punish travelers who forget to toggle a tiny switch in their device settings.

A closer look

International cell phone roaming charges are essentially a form of legalized extortion, designed to severely punish travelers who forget to toggle a tiny switch in their device settings. Telecommunications companies have agreements with foreign networks that cost them mere fractions of a penny, but they gleefully mark up the price by thousands of percent the moment your phone dares to ping a tower in a different country. You could unknowingly download a single marketing email or let a weather app refresh in the background, only to return home to a telephone bill that rivals the gross domestic product of a small island nation. It forces modern travelers to act like desperate addicts, sprinting into local coffee shops and begging for the Wi-Fi password just so they can pull up a digital map and avoid wandering into traffic