[snaimon]

This does not answer the main thrust of this thread.

For thought.....

The more I think about it, the more I think that most costs are simply FIXED. You made the investment for a certain network capacity, you provide and maintain the equipment, you have built the towers, have already rented the space or bought land for towers, you need a certain # of employees to keep it going, you pay the electric bills.... So what are the variable costs? Sure, sometimes rents go up and electric rates go up and wages go up, etc. The trick is to drive up capacity usage; the more usage, the more revenue opportunities the company has.

I think one really has to wonder about COSTS. For instance, some German carriers are offering 5 and 6 cents / minute INNER-NET prepaid calls. Don't know about postpaid, but it would not surprise me if there are offers with very low network internal calling. And you don't think they are still making a profit on those calls? If all calls were made within the network, would that cell company not make a profit? And even when the called party is roaming!

In Germany there is a small battle beteen industry and the regulators over the network interconnection fees (sorry, the German term escapes me at the moment), which are to be reduced over time. The carriers like to keep these high regardless of the true cost to interconnect, because they keep up their revenues (and profits). I would view this as an additional revenue opportunity.

Is the roamer REALLY a burden or additional cost on either network? I don't think so at least if you accept my line of thinking above that most costs are fixed.

In CPP countires, the price to receive the call is built in to the caller pricing for NATIONAL calls. Who gets the revenue when the national user roams? Is it split between the two parties (say Germany and France, when a German visits France and roams and receives a call from his home country)? Must be. Just another revenue raising opportunity!

The German caller is paying his regular rate, perhaps as low a 5 cents per minute inner network. The caller cannot be expected to know if the called party is roaming or at home. In terms of fairness, ideally, the caller should pay an international rate to call his buddy roaming in France, but he does not.

National carriers work out roaming agreements and share revenues. I guess the sharing arrangements are secret.

Another idea I have is that, since the free roamers are relatively small (Liechtenstein, Estonia, Iceland, IOM) with small indigenous populations, the big guys did not fear large revenue losses and granted "most favored roaming nation" status. Of course, the big guys never dreamed that the SIMs would be sold internationally. If the concept of free roamings takes off and puts a real dent into the big guys' roaming revenues, I would bet any money those most favored free-roamer nations will lose their FREE INBOUNDs in a heartbeat. Somehow, someway, the outbound calls from Liechtenstein, Estonia, Iceland, IOM and the international interconnect fees to Liechtenstein, Estonia, Iceland, IOM from the nation networks are paying for free inbounds.

Stan