INTRODUCTION

During the 7th APEC Ministerial Meeting on Telecommunications and Information Industry, it was recognized that international mobile roaming charges are an important factor in facilitating cross-border communication services and are relevant to the APEC Leaders’ regional economic integration agenda. In this context, Australia put forward a project proposal at TEL 38 in Limato undertake a survey of economies and to hold a half day workshop to address at TEL 39 in Singapore.

The International Mobile Roaming Workshop was well attended and participants were enthusiastic to explore this issue. Presentations were delivered by Australia, INTUG and ASEAN Telecommunications Senior Officials Working Group Meeting (TELSOM).Presentations were followed by a speed exchange session to consider the issues of:

  • substitute technologies;
  • regulatory approaches and options; and
  • consumer awareness and information.

In introducing the workshop, the LSG Convener, Susan Johnston, noted the parallel work being undertaken in other groups such as the ITU, OECD and ASEAN. This work includes data collection and studies of roaming charges. Ms Johnston commented that it was encouraging to see such a high level of interest in this important issue.

PRESENTATIONS

Australia: APEC survey results

The first presentation on international mobile roaming issues was given by Richard Brown of Australia’s Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Australia provided a summary of the results of the survey conducted of APEC economies that was distributed shortly after TEL38.

The survey found there is a range of mobile network systems and frequencies in use throughout the APEC region. Although GSM is the most common system, consumers need to know if their handset is compatible in the economy to which they are travelling.Most economies reported that they operate on the Calling Party Pays system. Consumers from these economies may be unaware that when they travel, they are paying to receive calls as well as make them.

While many economies have undertaken reviews of domestic mobile service pricing, these activities are rarely undertaken for international services.

Data download prices vary across different economies, but the average charge is approximately USD $15/mb. The prices associated with data roaming is difficult to understand for many consumers both in terms of how much data roaming costs per megabyte, and also how much data is contained in each download of emails, websites, music and so on. It was concluded that increased information for consumers on this issue will help to avoid excess charges.

Survey respondents identified international calling cards as the most common substitute technology, closely followed by local pre-paid SIM cards and VOIP. Not all travelers are aware of the range of alternatives to making expensive roamed calls.

All 12 participating economies reported that carriers publish roaming price information on their websites. It was concluded that other mediums for providing consumer information, such as SMS on arrival and a web portal comparing different carrier’s rates may have the effect of increasing competition and consumer awareness of prices. Most economies identified that agencies in their economy require carriers to report on traffic volume and revenues, but fewer economies report on wholesale costs and revenues of mobile roaming.

The common theme identified is that there would be considerable benefit in providing consumers with comprehensive information on international mobile roaming. This would assist consumers to choose the least cost international mobile roaming option or alternatively to choose an effective international mobile roaming substitute.

ASEAN TELSOM

Evelyn Goh, Assistant Director from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, on behalf of ASEAN TELSOM. Ms Goh presented the “Study on International Roaming Charges in ASEAN” to the workshop. Ms Goh elaborated on the motivation and objectives of the Study as well as the scope of the Study. Ms Goh also described the datathat was collected and identified some key learning points. In her concluding slides, Ms Goh highlighted the cross-border nature of international mobile roaming and that mobile operators have little incentive to reduce international roaming rates as inbound roamers to their networks are not their “customers”.

INTUG

Rosemary Sinclair of INTUG provided a consumer perspective on international roaming services. In this context,‘consumers’ include large businesses, small to medium businesses and residential users. INTUG stated that none of these users are able to access competitively priced international roaming services - whether for voice, SMS or data services. INTUG outlined the prices which end users would face at TEL 39, TEL 40 and TELMIN 8.

INTUG has concluded that end users do not see that roaming service prices are cost related and look to regulators for responses to ensure markets deliver competitively based prices. INTUG’s experience shows that the available "work arounds" are not seen by end users as effective substitutes to being able to use their own handset, services and monthly plan spend when travelling.

In INTUG’s view, the ability to use any device, anywhere, anytime should not be compromised by excessive pricing. At present, price is a barrier to effective and innovative uses of advanced communications services throughout APEC economies. INTUG would welcome clear and consistent information across the region but does not believe that this alone will drive prices to cost oriented levels. INTUG encouraged APEC members to work with each other to co-ordinate efforts to bring prices for roaming services down.

SPEED EXCHANGE SESSION

Consumer Awareness and Information

The moderator of this session was Anita Dey of the USA Federal Communications Commission. Many in the group agreed that the vast majority of consumers’ education about international mobile roaming comes from makinga mistake that the individual consumer will make only once – using your phone overseas on a normal basis, and coming home to a monstrous bill. Some did comment, however, that is this not a prominent or highly political issue because in total there are relatively few people in certain economies who are travel overseas.

Consumers do have information regarding international mobile roaming pricing available to them, but it is not always easy to find. As one person said, it may take “12 clicks to the underbelly of some Website” to find the relevant information. If the information is available, it may not even be the final price – it may have local taxes and other fees added later. It was commented that in some circumstances consumers receive some pricing information from text messages they receive when arriving at their destination. Some governments do require companies to post pricing information on their Website. Consumers find this information useful but a central repository of information on mobile roaming rates was viewed as a potentially beneficial option.

Substitute technologies

The moderator of this session was Richard Brown of the Australian Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Participants in this group identified a number of technologies that provide at least some of the functionality of international mobile roaming. These included phone cards, the use of domestic SIM cards, VoIP applications such as Skype and call forwarding to mobile devices with dual SIM cards. It was concluded that although each of these devices can help individuals to use mobile devices and avoid ‘bill shock’, none of the technologies provided the full flexibility and functionality of international mobile roaming.

While many substitute technologies are available, it is not always easy for consumers to understand where they can purchase, set up and operate this equipment. There was consensus that there would be value in regulators in each economy providing information on substitute technologies and pricing information on a central website.

Regulatory Approaches and Options

The moderator of this session was Kester Gordon of New Zealand’s Ministry of Economic Development. Discussions in this group focused on the use of regulation as a potential way of addressing excessive international mobile roaming charges. There was recognition that any regulation would need to necessarily be based on international cooperation between regulatory authorities across jurisdictions. It was considered important that before regulatory options are assessed there be a clear understanding of the problem and the "market failure" issue to be addressed. It was also noted that the benefits of regulation should be weighed against the risks and costs of implementing regulation. Risks include potentially distorting the price relativities for ordinary (non-roaming) mobile calls and discouraging the availability of roaming services.

Several possible regulatory solutions were identified that could be adopted to regulate international mobile roaming charges and include regulating through:

  • Trade Agreements (bilateral or multilateral);
  • Trade Bodies (e.g. WTO);
  • Standards Bodies (e.g. ITU); and
  • Economic Development Bodies (e.g. APEC).

The APEC TEL Mutual Recognition Arrangements (MRA) model that has been adopted for the recognition of conformance arrangements for telecommunications equipment was identified as one possible model that would be worth exploring to determine whether it would be appropriate to consider such an approach in examining the issue of international mobile roaming.

TEL has a number of examples where high level principles have been developed to assist economies in their own decision making and policy and regulatory approaches eg Spam Principles, Broadband Principles among others.

It was considered that it would be useful to provide checklist of suitable policy and regulatory approaches identifying their respective strengths and weaknesses as a next step.

The checklist could be used by economies to inform decision making in regard to pricing for international mobile roaming charges.

The objective of this work is to address Ministers’ concerns that international mobile roaming charges are an important factor in facilitating cross-border communication services and are relevant to the APEC Leaders’ regional economic integration agenda

FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR APEC TEL

Workshop participants generally agreed on the need for future action on international mobile roaming. Suggestions for future action included:

  • an Industry Roundtable focusing on substitute international mobile roaming technologies;
  • having the LSG establish an oversight committee to consider future work on international mobile roaming issues, including:
  • developing and releasing International Mobile Roaming Consumer Guidelines for the purpose of empowering consumers through the provision of information on both pricing and substitute technologies; and
  • co-ordinate a full day LSG International Mobile Roaming Workshop at TEL40 that will consider relevant recent studies, the views of a range of stakeholders and proposals for future action from economies.

In addition, INTUG encouraged APEC economies to engage in multilateral and bilateral agreements to achieve cost-oriented inter-operator prices for international roaming services, which will support the trade facilitation and regional integration efforts requested by TEL Ministers.

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