* Beware cost traps for roaming users
It is a challenge to contain out-of-country mobile communications costs while not utterly inconveniencing users beyond the point of productivity. Some users traveling through multiple countries do have the time to run around acquiring bags of different phones or subscriber identity modules (SIM) that will work in each locale. Some don’t.
But beware that it’s darn pricey to just take a GSM phone outside the country and use it “as is.”
Let’s say a user arrives in a European country, cold, with a GSM-enabled phone programmed for use on a U.S. carrier’s network. The phone lights right up and associates with an in-country local GSM provider’s network. If the user simply makes and receives phone calls per usual, without a pre-existing global roaming plan with the home carrier or a local plan and SIM, your company will find itself in invoice sticker shock.
David Heit, director of enterprise product management at Research In Motion, which recently announced its BlackBerry 8830 global dual-radio “world phone,” advises: “If there is no predetermined roaming rate [between your service provider and the overseas providers you use], you’ll pay rack rates” in foreign countries.
Rack rates are undiscounted, list prices for per-minute local, long-distance, and roaming charges. The roaming-charge portion of a voice call alone can be more than $2 per minute, says Michael Rozender, principal of Rozender Consultants International in Oakville, Ontario. And if there are long-distance charges involved, the total price per minute could be more than $5.
Note, too, that long-distance charges apply not just when the user makes an out-of-country call, but also when someone calls that user’s U.S. cell number and the call gets forwarded across the Atlantic or Pacific to the user’s temporary location. And, in some countries, you pay both to send and receive calls.
There are options for circumventing some of these charges, which the next newsletter will examine.
