While lower mobile roaming tariffs have encouraged more Europeans, including the Maltese, to use their phones and tablets while abroad, the economic crisis in Europe where most of the roaming takes place is impacting the market.
82 per cent of our roaming takes place within Europe- Martin Debattista
Vodafone Malta’s chief commercial officer Joseph Cuschieri explains the current situation in terms of mobile roaming when the holidaying season is nearing its peak.
“Last year, we experienced a 10 per cent growth over the previous year in customers who used their phone abroad,” he said. “82 per cent of our roaming takes place within Europe. However, with the worsening economic crisis in some of our key markets, the trends aren’t positive.”
The European Commission has turned its sights to mobile data roaming, after a marked increase in smartphone usage over the past years. From July 1, roaming charges in the EU decreased again for making and receiving calls and text messages but the price of data roaming to access the internet was significantly lowered too. The revised mobile roaming pricing schemes are known as the Eurotariff.
Statistics provided by the Malta Communications Authority confirm that mobile roaming activities by the Maltese have significantly increased, more than doubled in fact, between 2005 and 2011, especially from 2007 onwards when the Eurotariff was introduced and subsequently lowered year on year.
Yet some people still feel that it is very expensive to use their mobile or smartphone abroad in the same way as they would when they are in their home country.
“The EU was right in regulating roaming pricing and Vodafone has been a supporter of such an initiative from the outset,” Mr Cuschieri added. “It is also true that data roaming usage is expensive and that customers have experienced bill shocks, and still do. Having said this, one must keep in mind that providing quality roaming services is much costlier than local services and the pace of investment and innovation has become more frequent than ever before. With the Vodafone Passport and Vodafone Traveller propositions, we made it a point to provide a cheaper alternative to the EU regulated rates.”
With Vodafone Traveller, customers will only pay local rates for data, SMS and calls when roaming within the EU at a daily charge of €3 daily. All incoming calls are free and included in the €3 daily charge.
“This new proposition is a very positive step in the right direction because certainly a lot of people do not like to have to limit their usage simply because they happen to move from one country to another. However, a customer can always opt for the EU-mandated rates which we offer our customers by default.”
From an operator point of view, Mr Cuschieri believes that ideally operators should not wait to provide cheaper roaming tariffs and it should be the competitive market dynamics to determine pricing and innovation. In some cases, however, and in many industries, a regulatory push is the trigger that accelerates such a process. In the meantime, Vodafone Malta is actively participating in all the roaming forums and initiatives within Vodafone Group.
Meetings have focused on maritime roaming on ships and embedded mobile roaming.
“We wanted to go even further than that, and provide our customers with more freedom to use their mobile device when roaming within the EU,” Mr Cuschieri said.
“As a company we believe that pushing the boundaries on roaming pricing will unlock usage which ultimately benefits the customer. Increased roaming usage will, in return, encourage Vodafone to introduce more innovative and value adding roaming solutions for customers in the foreseeable future.”