Chart comparing Roaming Rates for 4 intl. SIMS in 190 countries

[RTuesday]

Originally Posted by snidely

Re: IOM rates.
...
My guess is that either (1) the central UK govt. subsidizes the IOM operator and/or (2) there is a much higher termination cost for calling an IOM number that the carriers either (a) don't know about or (b) do know but their systems can't distinguish between calls going to diff. UK - +44 - systems.
I do know that some operators can't distinguish between calls going to the mainland U.S. and countries in the Carribean w. +1 numbers for setting rates.

The UK government doesn't have anything to do with Manx Telecom (apart from anything else, MT is now a division of Telefonica of Spain). Nor does it have any direct control over phone systems in the IOM, that's the job of the Isle of Man Communications Commission.

The IOMCC does have to deal with the UK's Ofcom for number ranges, much like countries like Caymans +1 345 have to deal with Nanpa, because the country code is shared. But Ofcom doesn't control the rates or how the numbers are used.

I don't think there's any reason other than lack of will (or number availability, or regulation) why any UK based mobile company couldn't do something similar to what is being done with Manx number ranges. It costs so much to call any UK mobile number that there is plenty of room for the forwarding/roaming cost.

Indeed many of the UK 0844/0871 etc international callthrough numbers like pennyphone.co.uk (similar to the Iowa numbers) do already forward calls internationally at rates to the (domestic) caller that are lower than calling UK mobiles.

There's no loophole or subsidy being exploited anywhere for the Manx numbers - they are simply using the high incoming charges to "UK" mobiles to pay for the forwarding/roaming. Same could be done with UK numbers, or Jersey/Guernsey.

On your last sentence - I'd be amazed if any carrier charged the Caribbean at US rates, other than as an initial error. With all the premium rate numbers there they wouldn't last long...

Thanks for doing the chart, I'd be interested to see it, but I currently can't reach the chart with either link.