Wireless-The Cost of Roaming Wireless11 December 2004
Cellphone roaming has become as much a part of international travel as frequent flier miles and long immigration lines.
The chirp of a handset connecting to a network as a traveler alights from a plane has become a reassuring link to back home. But it remains a mysterious process. Few know much about how their phones choose a network, or, more important, how much they are being charged and why.
Critics complain that the wireless operators prefer it that way. The GSM Association, an industry group, says ease of roaming is what has made GSM, or global system for mobile, the world's most widely used mobile standard. But as wireless carriers battle increasing market saturation in their home markets, roaming for them also means a financial premium.
Lucrative Business
The result is that when you cross a border, often your first commercial encounter is with a wireless company or two or three searching for your cellphone.
Mike Robey, chief operating officer for the Hong Kong operator CSL, says the competition for in-bound visitors in the mobile-happy Asian market has become fierce, and each carrier tries to get good coverage at airports and other crossings. Hong Kong roaming charges are a "nice premium, not a huge one," of about 10 percent to 15 percent over local call charges, he said.
Operators jockey for position at airports and other border crossings, Robey says. But increasing the power of the network signal they send in an effort to be the first recognized by a handset is the crudest method.
Instead, companies are resorting to commercial means like the alliances and code-sharing seen in the airline business. John Hoffman, chief executive of Roamware, a company that provides roaming software for operators, says up to 50 percent of roaming travelers will find themselves on the network preferred by their home network.
'Forced Roaming'
Some travelers may have made the choice manually, but in most cases they will have been guided there by the software in their phones' SIM cards. The practice is called traffic steering and, according to Hoffman, "it's hot." It is also controversial because customers are often unaware they are being pushed onto networks, although they can override the move with their own selection.
Robey calls traffic steering "forced roaming." CSL has preferred partners, he says, but does not steer customers to their networks. "If you force users onto a network with poor coverage, there will be a customer backlash," he said.
Steering has arisen out of the emergence of global carriers and brands, like Vodafone and Hutchison, that drive their customers to foreign networks in which they have a stake. Other nonequity alliances have sprung up, like the pan-European Starmap, led by O2, and Freemove, which includes Orange and T-Mobile .
The Brussels-based International Telecommunications Users' Group, known as Intug, a regular critic of mobile roaming practices, complains these alliances do little for the consumer. Ewan Sutherland, the group's executive director, says there is no sign of the lower prices these alliances claim, and no packages for corporate users. "Pricing for roaming calls continues to be marked by strange variations," he said.
An Intug survey of roaming fees charged during the Athens Olympics found they varied by a factor of three. Telefonica charged its Spanish customers less than 40 euro cents a minute for a local call, while T-Mobile US priced calls for its American subscribers at more than 1.20, or $1.55
Ask First
When it comes to getting e-mail or surfing the Web abroad using a mobile, Sutherland said, "My best advice is to avoid roaming if you can." Consumers using their mobiles abroad for voice or data should in any case ask their wireless carriers for a list of roaming fees. This at least tells you which is their cheapest partner in each country.
Sutherland suggests two other money-saving strategies. One is to maximize use of land-line phones. Carry a calling card and use it to return calls, or ask people to call you back in your hotel or on another fixed phone.
The other is to take advantage of the Internet. Leave a message in your voicemail for callers to contact you by e-mail. Make sure your hotel room has a broadband connection or get a Wi-Fi card and an Internet roaming account.
With a broadband hotel connection, you can use your laptop to call around the world with Internet voice software like Skype. It is not as convenient as a cellphone, but at a few cents a minute it staves off roaming sticker shock. And it is the network of your choosing.
Source: TechNewsWorld.com
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