Is it time we had global mobile roaming?

I had inclusive European roaming at UK rates long before the EU agreement came into effect. First with Orange & then Three. I just shopped around. What the EU agreement did do was remove some of (but not all) the sneaky over the top charges. We just need to make sure our Goverment doesn’t allow them to sneak back in. Three’s current Feel at home pack has over 71 countries including the USA & Australia/NZ.

It would be interesting if we could get stories about mobile charges from our American cousins. I have relatives who phone from India, they send American originated video clips and the usual religious righteous messages that are definitely of American origin. I have questioned them on the costs of these messages and calls, because they are not rich people, they say the phone costs are minimal. Does the west subsidise the poor countries so as they get hooked on the service (like drug addicts) and then the companies can charge what they wish eventually?

When a call is made to a landline or mobile number allocated to a different provider, there are then two telephone companies involved in the call and both want to be paid for carrying that call. There are two ways this can happen.

In the UK, the caller pays their provider for the call, either by purchasing an inclusive allowance, usually on a monthly basis, or by paying a per-minute rate for each call made. These charges are set entirely by the caller’s phone provider, and there are dozens of providers, and hundreds of tariffs, to choose from.

The caller’s phone provider is then charged by the called party’s phone provider for carrying the call to its final destination. This charge is known as the termination rate and it can be up to around 0.2p per minute for calls to geographic numbers or up to 0.5p per minute for calls to mobile numbers. As these rates have reduced over time, this has allowed ever larger inclusive allowances for far less money. Nowadays, some mobile providers offer unlimited calls and texts for £10 per month. The called party pays nothing for incoming calls.

The “calling party pays” principle is, however, not universal. In the US, for example, the caller pays their phone provider for the call and the called party’s phone provider is separately paid by the call recipient, not by a termination rate charged to the caller’s phone provider. That is, the called party pays their phone provider for handling their incoming calls.

Part of the reason for this is that within every US area code, there is a mix of landline and mobile numbers, a caller will generally not be aware whether a number they are calling is for a landline or a mobile, whereas here in the UK landline and mobile numbers use completely diferent prefixes. In the US, therefore, mobile users pay the extra charges incurred in delivering calls to their mobile phone.

In the UK, callers used to pay much more to call a mobile number than to call a landline number. Mobile Termination Rates have reduced from around 40p per minute in the 1990s to less than 0.5p per minute now. This means that nowadays it doesn’t generally cost any more to call a mobile number than to call a landline number. In most cases, both types of number are included in monthly allowances.

Inclusive allowances also cover calls to 03 numbers. The termination rate for those can be up to around 0.56p per minute.