Mobile roaming rip-off to roll on and on

Businesses can look forward to high and confusing roaming rates when employees access mobile voice and data services abroad for some time to come, experts said on Tuesday.

Companies and consumers have been charged up to £20 per MB for 3G and GPRS data downloads, meaning that it can cost £5 just to check an international tariff rate.

Mobile technology giant O2 said the variation in international carrier rates would mean continuing rate unpredictability for businesses.

Mike Short, vice-president of research and development at O2, said: "In the UK we have a tariff that allows unlimited calls. International tariffs are more challenging, as we don't know where our costs are going to be. The costs for international roaming are difficult to predict because of different international carrier charges."

O2 indicated it was in negotiation with some European carriers to provide a fixed roaming rate.

Short said: "We are looking at fixed roaming prices for certain western European destinations."

Communications regulator Ofcom has recognised that some users are caught out by international roaming rates and announced on Tuesday it has begun examining international mobile roaming fees.

However, this inquiry will not cover the cost of data services. As silicon sister site ZDNet UK reported late last year, one Orange customer was charged £800 after downloading just 80MB of data using a 3G card in France and Germany but later lost his case to have the bill rescinded.

Mobile software vendor Intellisync said the increasing mobility of workers and diversity of carriers is the root cause of the problem.

Rip Gerber, managing director for ecommerce at Intellisync, said: "The problem is the environment is changing. Mobile usage is increasingly dynamic and tariff information changes depending on where you are in the world.

"What we need is a message generation contractor to act in a consultative role, with the ability to give flexible pricing plans. They would be able to negotiate against different carriers."

One systems integrator agreed that businesses find roaming rates an issue and suggested that artificial intelligence programs could automatically find and maintain the lowest available roaming fees.

Jaye Isherwood, product manager for mobile technologies at Capgemini Ernst & Young, said: "Businesses and IT haven't had visibility of mobile telephony costs. But now we can have associative intelligent agents on devices. Intelligent agents can lock down devices [to the most competitive roaming rate]."

Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK