Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Mobile Operators reacting to Viviane - Too little, too late?
this Tuesday, May 9, 2006 the International Herald Tribune is asking. Vodafone is announcing to cut their roaming charges by 40% over the next year, after Orange announced a cut by 25% and T-Mobile UK announced a flat 1 Euro per minute.
This will not be enough, a Ovum analyst said and a spokesman from Viviane Reding said, that she still plans to introduce her regulation before summer break.
Reding said already in March that she planned to regulate roaming charges in the EU by tying them to domestic calling rates (which one of the 100 different rates a normal mobile operator is offering?) and eliminating charges for receiving calls outside the home markets.
The latter is a bit contradictory to the current plans to lower the termination charges to mobile operators (the market 18 for mobile termination) as a whole, or are the mobile operators now in a double squeeze?
In my opinion the roaming charges should go away, but called mobile subscribers should take their part, in the home network or abroad. It is not my problem if somebody wants to be mobile, in the country or outside, but I do not want to pay for it. I do not see any reason to pay different charges for calling a mobile or a fixed line. This is basically a "cross subsidy" from the "rich" fixed operators to the "poor" mobile operators. Not only a subsidy, but in also in the wrong direction.
Back to roaming charges: what I consider funny now is the comments from some mobile operators or their lobby groups. Tom Philips, head of regulatory affairs at the GSM Association said proudly: "The cuts by Vodafone show the market is competitive"
Huh? We obviously live on different planets.
IMHO this shows exactly the opposite: There was no movement up to now by the mobile cartel, only at gun-point. And one may ask also the question, if they really are able to cut their charges to half so easily, what is really possible?
And of course, coming from an up-to now heavily regulated incumbent, I enjoy to see others always crying for regulation (of somebody elso, of course, according to the Floriani Principle), now to suffer also ;-)
This will not be enough, a Ovum analyst said and a spokesman from Viviane Reding said, that she still plans to introduce her regulation before summer break.
Reding said already in March that she planned to regulate roaming charges in the EU by tying them to domestic calling rates (which one of the 100 different rates a normal mobile operator is offering?) and eliminating charges for receiving calls outside the home markets.
The latter is a bit contradictory to the current plans to lower the termination charges to mobile operators (the market 18 for mobile termination) as a whole, or are the mobile operators now in a double squeeze?
In my opinion the roaming charges should go away, but called mobile subscribers should take their part, in the home network or abroad. It is not my problem if somebody wants to be mobile, in the country or outside, but I do not want to pay for it. I do not see any reason to pay different charges for calling a mobile or a fixed line. This is basically a "cross subsidy" from the "rich" fixed operators to the "poor" mobile operators. Not only a subsidy, but in also in the wrong direction.
Back to roaming charges: what I consider funny now is the comments from some mobile operators or their lobby groups. Tom Philips, head of regulatory affairs at the GSM Association said proudly: "The cuts by Vodafone show the market is competitive"
Huh? We obviously live on different planets.
IMHO this shows exactly the opposite: There was no movement up to now by the mobile cartel, only at gun-point. And one may ask also the question, if they really are able to cut their charges to half so easily, what is really possible?
And of course, coming from an up-to now heavily regulated incumbent, I enjoy to see others always crying for regulation (of somebody elso, of course, according to the Floriani Principle), now to suffer also ;-)
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