Does Anyone Know the REAL Roaming Costs Incurred by Carriers?

[MATHA531]

Well the concepts are not really new....more than 30 years ago, the bell system controlled much of the local telephone companies in the USA and they claimed they had to use inflated long distance rates to subsidize the ability to provide universal local telephone service. Slowly alternative long distance carriers began to surface threatening AT&T's (the original one) monopolistic practices. Interstate ld rates of AT&T were regulated and the new comers were able to charge what they wanted.

The ultimate result was the break up of the bell system...one of the most reliable systems in the world was broken into composite parts....then AT&T (the surviving company) basically became a ld providers and its off shots such as well one example was what was then czlled NYNEX which consisted of the original bell owned units in NY State (New York Telephone) and New England (New England Telephone)....New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland I believe were in separate system called Bell Atlantic....yada yada yada...slowly but surely, they begain doing guess what...re-uniting so NYNEX joined Bell Atlantic to become Verizon...which they got permission besides offering local service to offer long distance service to compete against...AT&T...well we don't have to go through the whole history other than to say it was the claim of the telcoms that to keep local rates low, long distance rates had to subsidize them.

Of course then cell phones came along...originally local areas and you roamed outside your local area in the USA with astoundingly high rates...also international roaming was pie in the sky...especially since the US carriers were slow to adopt gsm...slowly but surely the whole USA became one large non roaming area and all the rest again is history.

It is this model where there is no roaming within the USA, for the most part, that I believe Ms. Redding is trying to impose on the eu. Of course there is this constant battle, from my readings as I am really a disinterested party, between those who want the eu to become a super one bloc power with one foreign policy, one common currency, one mobile phone roaming rate whatever. Others want the eu to be a loose trade association. This is a battle that has apparently yet to be decided.....

But I agree. We're a long way away from trans continental international free roaming. The dual +1/+44 cards are a bit of a start, don't you think.

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

The ultimate result was the break up of the bell system...one of the most reliable systems in the world was broken into composite parts....

The deal on AT&T's long-distance monoploy and cross-ownership of most of the telcos in the US was that they were prohibited from engaging in other business. They really wanted to get into other business lines, particularly computer systems. So, breaking up the AT&T monopoly was as much thier idea as anyone else's.

[snidely]

So far no one has come up w. hard figures as to what, for example, Vodafone pays ATT or T-Mobile for each minute one of their customers is roaming on those U.S. systems. My guess is that it is pennies. After all, they each sell lots of minutes to MVNO companies that use their systems - and those MVNOs can make a profit by reselling those minutes for 10 cents or so.
The same for U.S. customers who go to the UK. My guess is that ATT and T-M pay less than 10 cents a minute to the various carriers since they, essentially, buying huge quantities of minutes. Since they charge 99 cents (ATT charges $1.29 for some customers) - that's an outrageous mark-up.

A long time ago I happened to see a price list from one overseas carrier as to what they actually paid various carriers in other countries. I can't recall any of the figures and by now it would be seriously outdated. Besides, I am sure I was under an NDA at the time. At that time, rates varied not only from country to country, but rates varied among diff. carriers within a country. I would guess that's still true.
What I can't understand is why a company like T-M doesn't encourage its own customers to roam on its own systems in other countries. The roaming cost is the same whether a customer roams on a T-M system or another system in a given country.

...mike

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by snidely

What I can't understand is why a company like T-M doesn't encourage its own customers to roam on its own systems in other countries.

With German providers roaming rates varied depending on the actual network before, but nowadays they have flat tariffs for each country, too.
The reason maybe that most customers are incabale of performing a manual network selection and because a lot of modern SIM cards contain a value called "EFspn", which is the service provider name. Depending on additional parameters on the SIM card and on how your mobile phone handles that "EFspn"-value it will either show EFspn + network name simultaenously or it will permanently switch between both names or it will completely override the name of the serving network by the EFspn. You may have noticed e.g. that when using a United Mobile SIM, the display said "United Mobile", allthough there is no such network anywhere in the world.
EFspn is mostly used by MVNOs, who want their brand name to appear in the display instead of the serving network, but also by MNOs who don't want competitors' names to appear in their customers' displays while roaming (especially during national roaming, which may convey the impression of inferior coverage). So subscribers often can't actually see which network they're registered on and so any incentive of using a group-owned network would be senseless.

[andy]

Originally Posted by snidely

So far no one has come up w. hard figures as to what, for example, Vodafone pays ATT or T-Mobile for each minute one of their customers is roaming on those U.S. systems. My guess is that it is pennies. After all, they each sell lots of minutes to MVNO companies that use their systems - and those MVNOs can make a profit by reselling those minutes for 10 cents or so.
The same for U.S. customers who go to the UK. My guess is that ATT and T-M pay less than 10 cents a minute to the various carriers since they, essentially, buying huge quantities of minutes. Since they charge 99 cents (ATT charges $1.29 for some customers) - that's an outrageous mark-up.

Roaming in or from USA has always been more expensive than other places, and you probably need to knock on the door of the US networks and ask them why. Same for others such as India. My guess is that they charge 20 to 50 cents a minute wholesale to visitors, not 10 or less. The lowest retail rates there are down to about 40 eurocents now, which might have only a few cents margin together with receipt of the termination fee on the visitor's number

Originally Posted by inquisitor

EFspn is mostly used by MVNOs, who want their brand name to appear in the display instead of the serving network, but also by MNOs who don't want competitors' names to appear in their customers' displays while roaming (especially during national roaming, which may convey the impression of inferior coverage). So subscribers often can't actually see which network they're registered on and so any incentive of using a group-owned network would be senseless.

In the case of congstar, they use a different font which doesn't show up on some phones, so the screen is blank and for a moment you might think there's no signal. It took me a couple of minutes to remember this last week, after doing a network search and the top of the list was also blank.

[inquisitor]

That different font is obviously a result of how your phone interprets the EF SPN-data from you SIM card.
According to 3GPP TS 31.102 there are only the following options for the EF SPN value:

• b1=0: display of registered PLMN name not required when registered PLMN is either HPLMN or a PLMN in the service provider PLMN list (see EFSPDI).
• b1=1: display of registered PLMN name required when registered PLMN is either HPLMN or a PLMN in the service provider PLMN list(see EFSPDI).
• b2=0: display of the service provider name is required when registered PLMN is neither HPLMN nor a PLMN in the service provider PLMN list(see EFSPDI).
• b2=1: display of the service provider name is not required when registered PLMN is neither HPLMN nor a PLMN in the service provider PLMN list(see EFSPDI).
  RFU (see TS 31.101)

So providers can define when to show the provider name, but not how.