Time for the telcos to stop spoiling the holiday

In addition to the now humble but invaluable GPS, a flourishing of apps specially designed for travellers is under way.

And it’s only the beginning.

New apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices, including many that interact with maps, will improve the ease with which we find cafes, restaurants, hotels and tourist sights that suit our interests. They may also help us avoid the risks of straying into dangerous areas or being taken via the cape by an unscrupulous taxi driver.
 


But it’s not just about finding places.

Apps are being developed to enrich your experience when you get to where you're going. Products like guided tours from eminent scholars or writers at historic sites or locals giving you a podcast style sampling of a city’s live music offerings. You might want to pursue a personal interest in your travels, architecture for example, in far greater depth than a guide book could ever enable. It's all coming soon to the convenient package of your smartphone.

 There are already plenty of travel apps of variable quality for sale at the iTunes store.

But there’s a problem. International telcos are refusing to play ball. The prices charged for global roaming are prohibitive and other irritants like locked phones don't help either. 

It’s hard to believe that any product, let alone one that has virtually no incremental delivery cost, could be legally charged in one jurisdiction at 1000 times the price of that same product in another jurisdiction. But that’s what happens with mobile data. And travellers that have dabbled in mobile roaming data downloads have learned bitter lessons.

This website has railed against the extortionate mobile data roaming charges before. Consumers probably expect to pay a premium for roaming over their home data charges. The question is how high should it be? Double? 5 times? 10 times? 100 times? Or 1000 times? What the market will bare perhaps? 

At present, the premium on global roaming from Australia (and from what I can tell most countries) is around 1000 times. Australian telco Telstra charges its phone customers $20 for 2GB of local data and $15 for a MB of global roaming data or around $30,000 for the same 2GB. How you might ask? Other major Australian telcos charge the same or similar prices.

There is a way around all this of course - and that is buying a new SIM card in every country you visit. This brings you back to reasonable data rates but it’s quite inconvenient to replace your SIM card in each new country and some countries (eg. France) make data SIM access difficult. It will also force you to abandon or divert your home number - not ideal if you're expecing calls. And you also need to ensure you’ve unlocked your smartphone to accept different SIM cards.

But if you do make the leap into purchasing a local card, you can move all your conversations to Skype (use their paid service to have full access to the global mobile and fixed line network at very low rates - you can even divert your home mobile to your Skype number) or Viber (this has its issues at present - you may need to reregister with each new SIM). Pretty much any solution is better than the ridiculous charges that your contract mobile telco from home will hit you up for in appreciate of your loyalty.

The big question is, if this is a vaguely competitive and innovative international telecoms environment, why hasn’t a phone company come up with a global roaming package with vaguely sensible pricing? Why in this highly competitive market do all phone companies offer near identical products and pricing? Why haven’t some of the international phone companies with global networks started bundling their services for international roaming use? There would be no shortage demand. So what’s stopping these great innovators?

Looks like market failure on a grand scale to us.

So please global telcos, try and create at least an illusion of innovation and competition in the global roaming business and show some regard for your supoosedly prized customers when they travel. Otherwise, we can only hope newer technologies and real competitors will push you guys out of the way.