Big issuesRoaming
What is it?
A customer roams when they use their mobile or dongle (mobile broadband modem) abroad and it connects to an international network to send and receive calls or use the internet. This capability is incredibly useful for customers who travel overseas and wish to stay in touch with their family and friends, or want to access the internet.
Over the past 18 months mobile broadband has exploded onto the market. Driven by excellent value and our deployment of the UK's biggest mobile broadband network, it has grown from a niche product for business users to a mainstream consumer service.
The down side to roaming is there are no controls in place to manage how much overseas operators charge 3 to use their networks for data. This means we can't offer our customers the kind of value we'd like to when they are roaming abroad. The prices can be very high – costing us as much as £16 per MB of data in some countries. We currently charge £3 per MB for roaming off our networks in the EU.
Why we think this is important...
In July 2008, 3 announced it had sold half a million dongles in the UK alone and over a million across Europe. It was the first time ever that UK customers were hitting the beaches, parks and cafes abroad expecting to be able to use their mobile broadband, highlighting an urgent need for data rates to come down.
3 is part of the Mobile Challengers Group, a group of operators that are fed up with high data charges. Together we announced a reciprocal 25p wholesale rate per MB. But in order for customers across the EU to benefit from the potential this offers more operators need to join and bring down their wholesales rates. Just five operator groups are currently members of this group, which is why 3 is lobbying for The European Commission to intervene and regulate these prices. As with voice roaming in Europe, only then can prices come down to allow a fair price for the consumer.
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