Brussels, 27/06/2008 (Agence Europe) - According to a study carried out by Connect2Roam for the European Commission, the use of mobile data services within individual member states is growing much faster than cross border data roaming services. This is because mobile operators are introducing aggressive retail rates to compete with existing broadband offers. However, use of data roaming services (when a user uses his mobile phone abroad) remains limited, as consumers are discouraged by extremely high charges when compared to national prices, and the lack of transparency related to the pricing by volume of data (Megabytes) used. High-volume users could face shocks when they receive their bills if, for example, they surf the internet for long periods when using their datacard connection on a laptop computer. Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding called on mobile network operators “to react to my request of February to voluntarily but clearly bring down mobile roaming charges for text messages and other data by 1 July”. Next Tuesday brings the deadline set by the Commission for operators to bring down their charges. Beyond that date, the Commission will examine the price charges, and publication of its initial assessment is scheduled for 18 July. In the light of the findings, which already look disappointing from the consumers' point of view, further action on the part of the Commission will be announced before the start of next year. The Commission will also take account of the findings of a public consultation exercise on the roaming directive which will close on 2 July and the European Regulators Group's report for the last quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008.
The study highlights major trends in the use of data roaming:
“Bill-shock” is one of the major problems for data services. Technological progress has also enabled operators to offer high-speed services comparable to fixed broadband services. However, wholesale prices for such data roaming services have not yet been adjusted to reflect such progress and therefore remain very high when compared to costs.
Wholesale roaming prices have decreased. However, even these lower roaming retail prices remain well above national retail prices. Moreover, they do not they necessarily lead to more attractive roaming prices for web-browsing, video-streaming or music downloads for the consumer.
Many operators are moving towards monthly or daily bundled offers for data roaming offering cheaper rates of €0.24 per megabyte on average. These rates are substantially less than unbundled offers, where standard prices can typically range from €5 to €10 per megabyte.
Lack of transparency is a serious problem: consumers are often neither aware of prices for data roaming nor of their actual data use. Consumers, therefore, remain extremely cautious. (I.L./transl.rt)