{"id":43845,"date":"2012-02-21T16:09:29","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T14:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=43845"},"modified":"2012-02-22T11:18:11","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T09:18:11","slug":"the-r200-per-mb-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/43845-the-r200-per-mb-conundrum.html","title":{"rendered":"The R200 per MB conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Governments should do more to boost international competition in mobile roaming markets in order to drive down the high prices being paid by consumers and businesses, says the <a title=\"Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/386549-OECD-Organisation-for-Economic-Co-operation-and-Development\">OECD<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Numerous cellular users have complained about excessive roaming charges when travelling abroad, and this is definitely not a problem unique to South Africans.<\/p>\n<p>The problem of excessive international mobile roaming charges is so prevalent globally that the OECD has released a new report to address the issue.<\/p>\n<p>In this report the OECD has laid out a series of measures that governments could take that would encourage effective competition, raise consumer awareness and protection, and ensure fairer prices.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe mobile phone sector is considered generally competitive in domestic markets. But for users travelling abroad, OECD analysis says roaming prices are excessive compared to the costs incurred by operators.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A recent OECD report revealed that prices of up to US$25 were being paid for downloading 1 MB of data while roaming abroad.<\/p>\n<p>The OECD recommendation says that promoting transparent information on roaming prices would protect consumers and businesses. A financial limit for data roaming services would also help.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is essential to remove barriers that prevent mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) from having access to wholesale mobile services on local conditions and on fair and reasonable terms,\u201d says the OECD.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese MVNOs should also benefit from regulated wholesale roaming rates between operators.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf other measures are not effective, governments should consider price regulation for roaming services. Wholesale roaming services could be regulated by means of bilateral or multilateral wholesale agreements with mutually established price caps,\u201d the OECD concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More competition is key to cutting excessive international mobile roaming charges, says OECD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":26067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35,859],"class_list":["post-43845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-headline","tag-oecd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43845"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43853,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43845\/revisions\/43853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}