Witnessing Roaming Cost Control In Action

Posted: August 3rd, 2010 | Author: Olivier Suard | Filed under: Telecom Trends | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments »

Last week, while at Comptel’s headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, I received the following text from my service provider:

“You’ve spent £34.04 (ex VAT) on data in Europe. We won’t charge you any more on your current bill, but we’ll stop the data service if you go over 50 MB.”

What an odd message! I thought:

  • Why the somewhat random £34.04?
  • What is 50 MB; how much daily usage does it represent? And how much have I used already?
  • What can I do about it? Can I up my quota? The message gives no indication of that.

Of course, I immediately recognized this message as an implementation of the European Union’s (EU) Roaming Cost Control legislation—not a weird, threatening and inconvenient message. I could hazard a guess that the £34.04 (plus 17.5% VAT) could be equivalent roughly to the legislation’s limit of €50. And I also knew that I had the right to change that limit. So all in all, the message made me smile. I called my service provider and was able to up my credit limit (to an equally bafflingly random figure incidentally). Problem solved—for now at least.

However, how would other customers feel about this message, especially if, like me, they were travelling on business and needed data services for their jobs? My guess is they would not have been too happy about this message, even if they do understand the benefits of avoiding bill shock. What might they have done about it? I guess there are two options here: either they stopped using data services or, like me, they called the service provider.

In other words, for the service provider in question, this text resulted in either a lost opportunity for further revenue or a cost for handling customer calls—not to mention the potential customer dissatisfaction.

Yet, all of this could have been so easily avoided if the message had been better phrased, and if it gave an option to increase the limit by simply replying to the text.

There is so much talk these days in our industry about policy control as a tool for personalization and improved customer experience. It seems, however, that some implementations do not quite live up to that aspiration—yet.


The Mobile Phone Bill Is What?!

Posted: May 28th, 2010 | Author: Olivier Suard | Filed under: Telecom Trends | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Last summer, I went gold prospecting in Finland’s Lemmenjoki National Park, which is about 250 km (155 miles) north of the Arctic Circle. This was at the height of the economic crisis, and desperate times called for desperate measures!

There is a serious telecom point to my story—while taking a break from panning, I checked my phone and found that it was connected to a Norwegian mobile network, even though Norway was some 65 km (40 miles) away! In other words, I was standing in one European country and roaming in another!

Unintentional roaming is not an unusual experience in Europe, but it also occurs elsewhere. For example, it happens frequently in Niagara Falls, which sits on the U.S. and Canadian border.

This brings me neatly to the subject of roaming cost control. Whether roaming intentionally or not, using one’s mobile phone abroad is far more costly than when using it at home. We’ve all heard the horror stories (admittedly some probably apocryphal). My own favourite is the one about the French café owner living on the Belgian border; he was hit by a €46,000 (U.S. $ 57,000) mobile Internet bill after unintentionally roaming into the neighbouring country. (An alternative, less credible but often quoted version of that story involves a German woman who downloaded an episode of Lost while in France.)

Now, however, regulators are stepping into the debate. Most notably, the European Union (EU) will, in just a few short weeks (1 July), enforce a new regulation on communications service providers (CSPs) in order to prevent ‘bill shock’. The legislation dictates lower costs for data services while roaming, and that subscribers are adequately informed of the charges.

One example of an operator preparing for this change—Finnish CSP DNA Ltd has deployed Comptel Roaming Cost Control, which allows subscribers to monitor their balances in real time, and notify them of any necessary actions, such as a notification or suspension of the services when a specified cut-off limit is reached.

The new regulation isn’t only affecting European CSPs.  After conducting a recent survey and finding that one in six mobile users have experienced ‘bill shock’ in service plans, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is putting pressure on U.S. operators and now considering legislation similar to that of the EU. Australian and New Zealand regulators are also looking into to tackling mobile roaming ‘bill shock’.

Excessive roaming bills have caused negative attention and bad publicity—and ultimately put customers off from using services that many operators are betting their futures on. Roaming cost control allows CSPs to not only comply with legislative demands, but also keep their customers satisfied and encourage data usage. As DNA points out, it is also an opportunity for CSPs to deploy real-time policy management and charging solutions that will help differentiate them from competitors by offering personalized services and price plans. This is critical for CSPs looking to fully monetize on mobile broadband services.

For the record, I did not find any gold. But thankfully, I was not hit by a big mobile phone bill either.