T-Mobile has promised to cut its overseas data-roaming charges later this year, after one of its senior executives told conference delegates that it is "screwing" its customers at the moment.
The remark was made by the operator’s enterprise strategy head, Ed Williams, at the Mobility Summit in London, during a panel discussion on the subject of mobile data tariffs.
Discussion moderator Chris Lewis, a senior analyst with Ovum, asked Williams if, despite T-Mobile’s £8.50 "all-you-can-eat" data tariff for usage within the UK, the operator still "screws" its customers on data roaming.
"Completely screw them, yes," was Williams’ response.
Williams, who is also a director of the Mobile Data Association, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that his comment was "made in jest". He also revealed that T-Mobile will be lowering its data-roaming tariffs later in 2006.
It's not yet clear exactly what T-Mobile is planning, but another company executive, senior pricing manager Uday Kansara, later told the conference that T-Mobile is planning to bring its consumer rates down "as the costs come down".
Last year, ZDNet UK exposed the fact that many mobile workers were falling victim to excessive roaming costs. MPs have accused the mobile operators of 'profiteering' from their customers, and the European Commission has now intervened in an attempt to drive prices down.
Ovum's Chris Lewis told ZDNet UK that T-Mobile’s flat-rate domestic data tariff is "what is needed" in the drive towards IP-based communications, but warned that networks such as T-Mobile and Orange "do make a significant proportion of their revenue from roaming charges".
According to Lewis, some UK-based multinational companies are finding that up to 60 percent of their mobile bill comes from voice and data-roaming charges.
Calling the transparency on data-roaming charges "negligible", Lewis told ZDNet UK that "CIOs want to see what they’re getting for their money".
"Most companies are saying ‘we don’t mind paying a bit of a [mobility] premium’… but it should be a fair rate for the service being offered. We loosely talk about value-added services, but value to whom? Value has been added for the operators — they have been charging premium prices," he said.
Data-roaming rates vary widely between operators, and between countries. Tariffs can be as high as as £10.28 per MB (in the case of Vodafone, if roaming outside one of its preferred partner networks), but most can be viewed on an operator's Web site. The one exception at the time of writing is T-Mobile, although a spokesperson for the company said on Tuesday that its worst-case scenario maximum tariff was 6.38 per MB.
The T-Mobile spokesperson also said it was an oversight that this tariff is not available on its Web site, and said that the situation would be corrected.
Orange’s vice president of business solutions, Alistair MacLeod, who appeared on the panel with Williams, told delegates that "the industry is adjusting itself as fast as can be coped with", although he pointed out that "mobility has an innate value that is worth paying for".
Referring to recent trends such as the promotion of so-called "free" fixed broadband, he continued: "At the moment there is a real sense that communications is free. We fully understand where the economics are going with this [and] we’ve got to manage the transition from where we were to where we’re going".
MacLeod also said that "all the operators are anxious to pre-empt the regulator", a reference to European Commissioner Viviane Reding's attempts to drive down roaming costs.
Speaking on the same panel, Clifford Wetherall, the group operations director of Telecom Plus, claimed that some companies were finding themselves with huge roaming bills because they were "very determined to get a good headline [flat] rate". As a result, they "forsake" some of the best roaming tariffs and end up with "monstrous international bills".
The moral of that story, said Wetherall, was that "flat doesn’t always work", and "every organisation needs to know what is important for them".
Talkback
I recently returned from France where i used T-Mobile's data services. I did not check the price before using the service, so i admit responsibility. I do not however agree that the cost is fair and i will be complaining to T-Mobile.
Here is my bill:
Session 1
Data Transfered: 2,057.280kb
Cost: £12.826
Session 2
Data Transfered: 2,046.420kb
Cost: £12.755
Total cost to check my emails £25.58
But no doubt they intend to keep on screwing roaming voice customers which is anyway where the money is, almost worth sucking them in on data to get the voice traffic, which is low bandwidth albeit more jitter sensitive.
There is no justification for charging €0.45 per minute or whatever for what is actually one originating national mobile call and a terrestrial DWDM fibre link to the detsination country. Its BS.
part of my letter to T-mobile this week:
Ref your invoice I have been charged £65.20 for “mobile data while abroad inside the EU”.
Your helpline tells me that this is for emails – 16 on 3rd June and 4 on 5th June.
This works out at £3.26 plus vat per email.
My Blackberry was mis-functioning and not even receiving e-mails at that time.
I was in France from 3rd June to 11th June so why did it only receive emails on those 2 dates? and thank goodness it was not working at £3.26 per email.
I cannot believe that these charges can be correct or very few people could afford to use a Blackberry overseas.
The chap obviously does not remember Ratner and the resulting death of the company arising from one joke.
Never ever trust a Telco and always ask for details before using a new service. Otherwise just say NO.
They have one driving goal. To up your ARPU by whatever means they can. Service is not on the Radar. Perceived value of the content is not their responsibility. This is a push technology over the wall like it or leave it business model, run by engineers who think they are marketeers, jobsworth service attitudes and accountants who don't understand investment, protected by their national governments (in back rooms if they are "liberalised".. Not people you should trust
What on earth is so life threatening you have to get it on a mobile data connection? Why not phone? Or use a fixed dial up when you arrive somewhere with a fixed phone which is now pence for MBytes and often faster than GPRS or 3G in reality, 40KBPS is normal now - and its certainly simpler to connect. Of course you need to have a good old fashioned global provider like Compuserve with national nodes in every country - but that's a no brainer IF you are going to travel much.
Failing that use a Web mail client in an internet cafe or a handy connected PC with a Browser. If you are savvy you can set up your Outlook/Outlook Xpress Mail account/identity on the PC. 5 minutes max.
Mobile access to what is store and forward e-mail is for those who need a gadget to show their importance, IMO. If its important, call someone, or someone will call you on your mobile telephone,voice is what its for, maybe text.
Despite the quoted assurance, I still can't find any indication of GPRS costs on the T-Mobile website either within the UK or overseas.