It looks like the cartel on international termination charges is starting to be challenged by regulators with Belgium making the first bold move against the high cost of roaming charges. Belgian regulator BIPT wants mobile operators to halve their wholesale call termination rates and then gradually lower them to reach EUR 0.017 per minute in 2013.
The first part of this is expected to result in at least 20% drop in call charges this year.
For Belgacom, the MTR will drop this year by EUR 0.0720 to 0.0445.
- January 2011 EUR 0.0377
- January 2012 EUR 0.0242
- January 2013 EUR 0.0107
Mobistar currently charges EUR 0.0902. This rate is expected to fall to EUR 0.0486 this year
- EUR 0.0410 in 2011
- EUR 0.0259 in 2012
- EUR 0.0107 in 2013
Base will see a reduction of more than 90 percent from its current EUR 0.1143 to EUR 0.0560 this year
- EUR 0.0469 in 2011,
- EUR 0.0288 in 2012
- EUR 0.0107 in 2013
Will this be the first domino to fall that will see roaming charges being brought into line with fair pricing for all users? After all with VoIP this is no more than a digital tranmission and mobile phone operators are jsut sending data over their wireless networks to do pretty much the same thing. What do you think the big US companies like AT&T and Verizon will do if their high cost roaming charges are challenged?
