Those who fly abroad frequently would have at some point or the other been ripped off by the high tariffs for international roaming services. Recently, I ran into a colleague who was palpitating while holding a mobile phone bill in his hand. The reason for his discomfort was the Rs 20,000 bill amount which his mobile operator had charged him with after he had just returned from a trip abroad. The poor chap had accidently kept his data connection on and as a result, his email and Facebook accounts, and other online applications were constantly being updated. By the end of the three-day trip he had used up quite a few megabytes of data.
But have you ever wondered why international roaming tariffs are so high? Vodafone, for example, charges Rs 185 a minute for outgoing calls and Rs 115 a minute for incoming calls when a post-paid subscriber (from Delhi) travels to the UAE. If the subscriber uses data services then he is charged an additional Rs 5.5 for every 10 KB of data downloaded.
An average email is about 10-15 KB and if you are someone who gets at least 100 emails a day then you would have to cough up Rs 550-650 a day just for accessing your emails. If you end up using your mobile phone in countries like Tajikistan or Azerbaijan, expect to get a heart-attack inducing bill.
Skewed prices
Operators admit, in hushed tones, that international roaming tariffs are at least ten times higher than what it actually costs them to offer the service. The reason for this irrational skew is because roaming tariffs are decided between two operators. The operator on whose network the subscriber is roaming has the upper hand and can quote any price he wants. An Airtel user travelling to the USA, for instance, is able to use his phone because Airtel has a deal with local players like AT&T or Verizon. Under this deal, AT&T and Verizon can ask Airtel for a very high wholesale rate and then Airtel adds its own profit margins to it.
Operators are able to get away with this because of two reasons - absence of a global regulator and lack of competition in this segment. When was the last time you heard about someone who chose an operator because he got a better price on international roaming rates? Most telecom consumers compare domestic tariffs before picking an operator, roaming charges are very rarely a factor. The service providers know this and hence they don't bother offering any discounts or price cuts to attract new users. Service providers justify the high rates on the grounds that they need the money from roaming services to balance out the low tariffs for domestic calls.
A survey done by tech publication ZDNet revealed that 80 per cent of those using data overseas said they have had a data roaming bill that they thought was too expensive. Since bilateral roaming agreements between operators pan across the globe, country specific regulators cannot do much. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has been trying to address this issue with telecom regulators of other countries but so far it hasn't had any success. Globally, only the European Commission has had some success in supervising the operators, but only for roaming within Europe.
Necessary regulations
The lack of a global regulatory mechanism means that international roaming tariffs will not become reasonable anytime soon. But operators can have a system in place to prevent raking up ridiculously expensive bills. For example, there are solutions that enable users to get live alerts on their usage in terms of money, airtime and bandwidth consumed while roaming. Users will also be able to put a cap on the amount they want to spend while roaming after which they will have the option of disconnecting. Globally, operators in countries such as China, Japan and Korea have already started using this method. It's time Indian players also start offering similar solutions.
For now, however, no such system is in place leaving international travellers with few alternatives. One way to get around roaming tariffs is to get local SIM cards through services offered by the likes of Matrix. But this involves changing numbers and is therefore not practical for those who want to keep in touch with people back home. The only way to avoid being ripped off, therefore, is to force the operators to compete on offering best roaming tariffs. That's possible only if consumers start making an issue of it.