IT is quite astounding in this era of technological advancement that cellular providers are still unable to significantly lower their rates for international roaming, for calls made and received, as well as for data usage. But cellular providers profess otherwise. Take a look, for example, at the copy of what looks at first glance to be a dream advertisement from MTN: “A first in South Africa from MTN-introducing Pay As You Go Data Roaming – Now you can surf the internet for as little as R2/MB while roaming.” Well… “a first in South Africa” relates to prepaid airtime and data, and the R2 charge is mainly applicable to African countries.
The debate on roaming charges has been ongoing for several years now, but how much progress has really been made in the area of curtailing these charges? The fact is that the roaming charges that are being billed to subscribers’ accounts are still exorbitant and it is mystifying that overseas telecom networks are able to justify such over-the-top charges to local cellular providers, who also look as though they may even be deriving a handling fee of some description from this source. Or is it that the local cellular providers are not putting enough pressure on all the overseas telecoms to reduce their charges?
Most recently, I travelled to the US and Alaska. Being aware of the severity of these charges, I took great care to limit the usage of my smartphone to a bare minimum. I turned off data roaming, only turning it back on when accessing data which I did very conservatively, for a few minutes at a time over a period of three weeks and this still elicited a charge by MTN of almost R4 000 to my account.
On querying this scandalous charge, I was sent what looks to be their standard and most frequently used e-mail template in which they advise: “… that data bundles, [of which I am allocated 200MB per month], are not applicable to roaming. That “data usage, while roaming, is billed in volume [how much data is used] and not duration [how long you are connected for]”. MTN then contradicts this by adding that “data is billed per session and not [the] total amount of data used for that specific period”. And so their diatribe goes on: “In South Africa, using data, you are billed for total volume use, but when roaming, the billing per 25KB is: R3.50 including VAT [value-added tax] in North America and R2.70 including VAT in Europe.”
At first glance, these charges look to be of little materiality. However, 25KB is a very small amount of data and when applying the above rates, it is evident that the high costs that could be incurred are being camouflaged. Let’s take 100MB which is half the data bundle that I receive every month, as a reasonable example for minimal overseas usage for a three-week period. And here’s the punchline – when roaming, on the basis of a 50/50 usage in each of the above continents, the charge would equate to R12 698.
By comparison, one gigabyte of data currently costs R149 back home in South Africa and on a current special it comes with one free gigabyte as well. Then there’s the connection fees “which are charged by the roaming network irrespective of whether there has been a data transfer to the phone or not”. This is all very confusing to say the least, suggesting to me that the basis that is being used to bill roaming charges is in need of a radical overhaul.
By way of some examples of inconsistency – my statement reflected that for 2.26 minutes of data usage I was billed R359.19; for 4.28 minutes the charge was R500.41; 9.15 minutes attracted a cost of R22.80; 3.16 minutes cost R20.52; and for usage totalling 12.11 minutes, which is another of the rare occasions that I spent more than a handful of minutes on my smartphone, the charge was R540.32.
Then there were the ludicrous durations of 2 hours 19 minutes, 1 hour 43 minutes and 1 hour 27 minutes during which time I was purportedly accessing data, which certainly was not the case, but these charges turned out to be minimal.
The overseas telecoms concerned were the Cingular Genesis, Maritime Communications and Manx telecom networks in Norway and the US, and I was advised that “all charges have been verified as correct and charged according to interim network agreements”. It seems that employees of the cellular group are determined to toe the party line, so to speak, in strongly defending these charges. Given the one available channel to voice an objection which has been exhausted, where one might ask, does all this leave users who believe, as I do, that they have been wronged?
This is not the first instance that I have been forced to object to roaming charges. Previously, while overseas, I was forced to dial the voicemail number repeatedly as my messages were in distinct and breaking up, attracting a high roaming charge. In this instance MTN did agree to pass a partial credit but only “in good faith”, so they informed me in their e-mail at the time, as their roaming department had advised them not to generate the credit as there was no discrepancy.
It is fair to say that cellular companies do caution against the use of smartphones while roaming given the voracity of these charges, but there is not nearly enough publicity being sent to their subscribers in this respect. Take the above-mentioned MTN advertisement which actually encourages roaming for reasons of low rates.
It is evident that warnings of excessive billings need to be generated on cellular phones frequently during roaming.
In this day and age it is not so easy to forego communication, so what are the current alternatives? Well… one could buy a local SIM card in the country being visited, but this is an inconvenience as there would then be the need to advise everyone back home of the new number and one does need to receive e-mails. However, this is the better option than the prepaid choice from MTN, which even with the advertised savings still looks frightfully expensive.
Cellular providers show huge profits and there is an absolute need, if they haven’t already done so, to make it a top priority to find a solution to the roaming-charge crisis. And should I dare venture to add that they ought to dig deep into their ever-growing pockets, if necessary, in order to support their customers on the principle of a fair distribution of wealth.
Irving Schlosberg is a chartered accountant and works as a business management consultant.