1 in 6 Americans have experienced “Bill Shock”, how about Europe?
Posted by Ron van Valkengoed
Findings of a survey released by FCC indicate that 30 million Americans have experienced the shock of unexpected increases in their monthly phone bill. “Bill shock” is defined as an unexpected increase in a monthly bill not caused by a change in a service plan.
Shocking results!
These results provide important insights into the real-world experiences of mobile customers. Operators can do much more than they are currently doing to help customers avoid unexpected fees.
In Europe (European Union) mobile data roaming will be cut off at €50 and users will receive a warning when they reach 80% of the chosen limit. These measures were taken after enormous media exposure to “Bill Shocks” with a German traveler running up a €46.000 bill while downloading a movie in France. The typical operator response has been “tough luck” and please pay your bill as the operator has to pay the roaming operator. The EU has also taken an active role in regulating and reducing the cost of mobile voice and texting while in roaming, and addressing operator practices of “per minute billing” and “start fees”. More info at http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/215
The European reality has been that the cost of mobile roaming or international calls has moved away from the EU to North America, Middle East, India and China (See Ezwim Telecom Monitor, http://www.ezwim.com/news/ezwim-telecom-monitor-2008 ). So the question becomes what can operators or regulators do beyond the EU border? The EU could consider to have this topic included as part of their bi-lateral trade agreements or through the WTO (The world is flat…isn’t it?), and nothing stops operators to have a “cap” or “cut off” mechanism in non EU countries . Technically this is a matter of treating post-paid subscribers as if they were “pre-paid” subscribers when in roaming, this forces all calls to contact the home operator (HLR/VLR) and allows for setting a “wallet” against this service.
The research is about consumers, not businesses. However businesses generally have multiple service providers and contracts in multiple regions so the risk of experiencing Bill Shock is even higher than for customers. The highest shock bill we have seen at Ezwim was €32.000 when one of our clients was using Skype for calls (and listening to radio) while being Bahrain. Mobile data cost ~€5 per MB in Bahrain and Skype uses around 55 kB/sec.
This reality demonstrates the need for Telecom Management solutions; systematically and proactively managing telecom will almost certainly lead to more control on telecom costs and better services. It also shows the need for integrating Telecom Management solutions, like Ezwim, with Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions…..MDM provides the ability for real time call and data logging, Ezwim can use this data for real time forecasting or calculating the cost per call or data session.
