INVESTIGATION
Mobile phone operators are stinging GPRS and 3G users with roaming charges of up to £20 a megabyte. That works out at up to £100 for a single iTunes download, and up to £5 just to check your tariff
NEWS:
Orange customer fights £800 roaming bill
A British businessman was surprised to be charged £769 for using a 3G/GPRS datacard in France and Germany
ANALYSIS:
The criminal costs of mobile data
Compared to the price of fixed broadband and Wi-Fi hotspots, the costs of GPRS and 3G roaming are ridiculously excessive
OPINION:
Short term greed means long term harm for mobile operators
Mobile data operators love high tariffs as much as users hate them. That's not a smart way to make money
BACKGROUND:
The great 3G data card road test
ZDNet UK took 3G data cards from four service providers on a day trip
to Microsoft's Reading Campus and back in the world's first real-life
3G group test
Crunch time for 3G
As Vodafone finally joins 3 in providing third-generation mobile
services, the question of whether the billions paid for the technology
will ever be recouped comes a step closer to being answered
3G data: the choice expands
Mobile professionals now have a choice of four 3G mobile data solutions from UK network operators. Check out our reviews
EC slams roaming scams
A Web site created by the European Commission will show if
you're being overcharged when you use your mobile abroad
Talkback
Please tell me that the UK didn't figure this out just recently! There's little difference with getting 'a great offer' by phone or regular mail only to find out later that you're paying ten times as much as need be if you cared to look into matters a bit more overall and detail specific. Another way is to simply "cut down to the bare essentials", "leave out all of the gadgets" and "be suspecious about free offers that normally cost quite a bit".
On the other hand, this might provide an answer as to why so many (IT) projects end up half-way with great budget overruns. If you only take into account what you're being told before you sign the contract (without reading it and fully understanding it) it's more then likely that you'll run into some "unforseen events" later on. After all, you're dealing with commercial chaps here and they'll take whatever you'll allow them to. If not now then later.
By the way, if you think GPRS ratings are crazy. Wait until you find out what they have in mind for UMTS and future follow-ups!
Their is another rip to look at here, I was in a country that didnt have GPRS and my phone automatically backed off to the backup wap number which is a normal telephone number , when this is dialed you get billed by the minute rather than the megabyte and is far more costly. As operators supply phones in this configuration they should make customers aware that their phone and their ability to judge costs will behave in this fashion.
The costs of roaming are nothing short of the biggest rip-off of all time, even more so when companies that are owned by a single entity like Orange and France Telecom and Vodafone and Telecel, and charge each country operation as if they are not related in any way, just to wring as much money out of their customers as they can. Equally, there is no uniformity of Services pricing across their operations so again there is absolutely zero benefit to their Network customers.
To beat them at their own game, buy a local pre-pay SIM when abroad and link your handset to the Internet and download all your data by the sync'n'go method because it costs very little to get your emails this way.
Wireless WIMAX is likely to solve most of this problem in the medium term.
OK. Enough is enough. If you are fed up with being charged outrageous prices of Voice calls and Data Transmissions over a GSM Network.
Just Google: Mazingo+ICED. Here is the solution to high 'roaming' costs and to receiving Data Downloads ....worldwide. Try doing so on a GSM network !!
If you spend more than $500 per month on Roaming just one month's ectra expenditure buys the Cell Phone and your communications bills will never exceed $80 per month going forward.
Arthur B.,
I got so annoyed at the way we are treated by all Mobile Network Operators, I decided to do something about it on behalf of all of us that 'Roam' a great deal.
The result is our Mazingo ICED SIP based Dual WiFi / GSM Cell phone and which uses Linux as the underlying Operating System.
In addition, I added all the bells and whistles we need to have access to, including a web browser, bluetooth and PDA functionalities.
ICED is truly a breakthrough technology and becaused it uses The Internet to deliver VOIP and major Data Downloads worldwide, transmission costs are kept to an absolute minimum.
If you are interested in it's specification, just registeryour interest on www,mazingo.tv. The Cellphones will be available at end of August.