The problem, Wong said, is staff don't always notify him of foreign travel -- and this was a prime case of why they should.

One solution, if a carrier contract has a similar provision, is simply a tough reporting policy where staff must give advance travel notice to managers.

Eventually, Bell agreed to negotiate the charges down to CDN$9,000, on condition that a similar incident not happen again. The carrier made sure of it by insisting Samsung subscribe to its Telicost service, which charges $5 a month per corporate subscriber for detailed monitoring of mobile devices. Telicost is a cloud service provided by Anomalous Networks of Montreal through carriers or direct to organizations. Carrier customers include AT&T in the U.S. and France Telecom's Orange wireless service.

"We have been offering this solution for the past 18 months and the response from our clients has been amazing," a Bell spokesman said in an email.

An agent is installed on each smart phone used by 278 Samsung staffers who are on a Bell Mobility contract. Wong is notified by email as soon as a unit is used out of the country -- triggered by the handset's GPS capability -- so he can immediately notify Bell and take advantage of the roaming discount.