Orange Armenia partners with MegaFon for revolutionary roaming service (Middle East)
Orange Armenia, subsidiary of France Telecom, together with MegaFon, one of the three largest Russian operators announced the start of a strategic partnership between two companies. Thanks to this new partnership Orange customers will benefit from unprecedented tariffs when roaming in Russia. In particular, when using the roaming service in MegaFon network, Orange Armenia customers will make and receive calls to and from Orange Armenia and MegaFon customers at a rate of only US$ 0.08.
Bruno Duthoit, Orange Armenia CEO, said that Orange is a powerful international player, and they are keen to provide customers with the best deals not only in Armenia, but also in roaming, specially for those countries they travel the most. Russia is one of the most popular destinations for Armenians, and they are happy today to offer the same tariff as for local calls in Armenia. Many Armenians, when they go to Russia, buy a SIM card of a local operator which generally has a very short lifetime, from several days to several weeks. From now on, customers will not need it and when leaving to Russia, they will feel themselves almost like home.
Konstantin Solodukhin, Deputy CEO for Development of National and International Long-Distance Communications, said on this occasion that for operators, the main factor for a successful roaming policy is having effective relationships with foreign partners, which will allow them to offer low rates for using mobile services abroad.
On MegaFon network Orange Armenia customers will have other advantages as well. The minute rate for all other incoming calls and for outgoing calls to other Russian operators will be $ 0.15, while calls to other operators’ customers in Armenia will be charged at $0.31 per min. Orange Armenia customers will also have an exclusive tariff for GPRS roaming charged at $0.23 per MB.
The exclusive roaming rates are available from April 1 to June 30.
EU plans to cancel roaming charges (Europe)
Mobile users tend to switch of their mobile phones while travelling abroad owing to the high roaming charges. Keeping this in mind, the European Commission will be introducing new rules causing mobile operators to reduce their roaming rates.
As per reports, the new policy will require consumers to pay a maximum of $ 0.38 per minute for a call and a charge of $ 0.9 for every MB of data downloaded across Europe.
Reports reveal that Commissioner Neelie Kroes said that consumers are fed up with being ripped off. Kroes added that the new roaming deal gives a long-term structural solution with lower prices, more choice and a new smart approach for data and internet browsing.
The new rules will be effective from July.
Meteor abolishes roaming charges in Europe (Ireland, Europe)
Mobile operator Meteor Ireland has become the first operator to abolish roaming charges in Europe enabling consumers to pay the same charges for calls and texts as when they are at home.
According to the company, the new service applies to both Pay-as-you-go and Bill pay customers. Further, the new policy would enable customers to pay more than 60 per cent less than Vodafone and O2 while roaming.
For users on the operator’s pay-as-you-go service, the call rates will be dropped to US$ 0.38 while texts will be charged at US$ 0.16. While, on the other hand, Bill Pay customers will be charged US$ 0.13 for a text and US$ 0.33 for a call. Also, all incoming calls and texts would be free for the consumer.
Reports reveal that Bill Blake, spokesman for Meteor has classified this decision as a groundbreaking one. He said that their customers will no longer have to worry about paying more for calls and texts while in the EU, with the added benefit of being able to receive calls from family and friends for free, as reported by the Irishtimes.
Talking about mobile data charges while roaming, Blake said that the wholesale rate for data in Europe at the moment is US$ 1.04 per Mb so they will be dropping their charges by 90 per cent. He concluded by saying that as this price continues to drop they will be hoping to pass that on to consumers but they’ve unfortunately not been able to bring it in line with domestic rates just yet.
Roaming charges for calls between Finland and Russia to drop
Finnish Minister of Communications, Suvi Lind©n and Russian Minister for Communications and Mass Media, Igor Shchegolev have hit a policy agreement on roaming charges between the two countries.
Business delegations involved in the negotiations discussed the implementation timetable and pricing schedule for roaming charges. Mobile telecommunications operators have been ordered to agree on these details by the 1st May. The roaming charge specified by the EU has been set as the reference pricing level.
According to minister Lind©n, the result of these negotiations is a major step forward for co-operation between their countries and proof that similar forms of co-operation can be used in many different areas. The price reductions will very apparent in the phone bills for all Finns and Russians using telephone or data services while travelling in either country.
The Finnish delegation is comprised of mobile telecommunications operator and equipment manufacturer representatives. The Russian delegation includes three executives from a major telecommunications company.
Spain and Portugal plan to purge Mobile Phone Roaming Charges
Spain and Portugal are planning to set a benchmark for telecommunications in the European Union by agreeing to remove cell phone roaming charges as part of efforts to promote their joint trade.
Preliminary talks have been held and the issue is set to be on the agenda of a summit meeting next month in Portugal between Jos© S³crates, the Portuguese prime minister, and his Spanish counterpart, Jos© Luis Rodrguez Zapatero.
According to Mr S³crates, such an agreement would bring a considerable benefit to joint trade and to millions of businessmen and tourists who travel across the Iberian Peninsula each year.
An agreement would also likely be welcomed by the European Commission, which has long been on a mission to require telecom operators to reduce differences in national roaming charges as well as between E.U. members to close to zero by 2015 to create a genuine single market for communications among the bloc’s 27 member states.
The European Union’s current roaming rules expire in July 2012, and the commission is to develop new proposals next spring for the period after 2012.
According to Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner responsible for overseeing telecom regulations, significant differences between roaming charges and national tariffs cannot be justified in a true single market. For her, a true digital market is a market where effective competition ensures that citizens, customers and businesses do not experience substantially different services or costs when they pass a border.
According to Spanish Industry Ministry official, it was too early to comment since the agenda of the summit meeting had not yet been completed. A roaming agreement between Spain and Portugal would also have a direct impact on telecom operators like Orange and Vodafone, which have an extensive network of European subsidiaries and are among the biggest domestic operators in both Spain and Portugal. Vodafone’s voice roaming service, set up in 2005, has more than 24 million clients across Europe, who pays a set-up fee in return for using domestic rates when abroad.
As per Simon Gordon, a spokesman for Vodafone, it did not split out roaming revenue by country and would not comment on the Portuguese-Spanish plan until such time a firm proposal or a consultative document is published publicly.
Nokia 5250: Amazing beats, Amazing Deals
Nokia has launched a new handset this week, Nokia 5250. The device has 2.8 inch TFT resistive touchscreen with 16 million colors for a better display and comes with amazing sound quality with a 3.5 mm audio jack. The internal memory of the handset is 51 MB, enough to store your favorite tracks, videos and pictures. It can be extended up to 16 GB. It also features Bluetooth, USB, EDGE communication and a 2 MP camera. Its battery backup is as good as before – 450 hours in stand by and 7 hours and 40 minutes in talk time.
The phone is also available on deals. It is available on pay as you go deals which offer users the service of best networks of UK like Vodafone, Virgin, O2, Talk-Talk, Three, Orange, T-Mobile etc. and one do not have to sign any kind of contract in these kinds of deals. Payments in these deals are made before making calls and this will help in maintaining mobile expenses.
The other deal is Nokia 5252 SIM free deals which offer the handset without any SIM card insert, hence, users can use the network and change it whenever they want to which saves money from high roaming charges.
BSNL issues Rs 150 crore recovery bill from operators (India)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: In a major controversy surrounding the Indian telecom sector, almost all major mobile phone service providers have been accused by state owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited of not paying correct roaming charges to BSNL. A total loss of around Rs 300 crore has been estimated by BSNL and for the recovery of Rs 150 crore, the company has already issued bills in six circles across the country.
TDSAT has been approached by two companies and they have gained stay against BSNL. It has been claimed by the companies that BSNL has misinterpreted the interconnect agreement. Sanchar Nigam Executive Association (SNEA) first noticed the discrepancies in Gujarat where an alleged irregularities worth Rs 22 crore was detected by a team led by sub divisional engineers D N Shah and B G Patel.
Rs 25 per month for every subscriber are supposed to be paid by the service providers using BSNL infrastructures. According to the agreement, they have to pay only when the subscriber is actually roaming however; it has been argued by the service providers that BSNL wants them to pay for all subscribers who are registered for the roaming service.
Orange UK subscriber charged £8k on roaming for data
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The capping of wholesale price of mobile data roaming rates in Europe does seem to work for the mobile users as a whopping amount of £8,000 was paid by one Orange UK subscriber for mobile data access while working abroad.
Orange charges £2.94 per MB for anyone travelling abroad and the student used internet believing he was entitled to 3GB of downloads under his existing tariff. That works out at €3.32 per MB, and is someway higher than the €1 per MB wholesale charge introduced by the EU in July.
Last year, a cap on wholesale data roaming charges was introduced by EU in order to cut the overall cost of roaming.
India’s state run telco BSNL joins per second billing club
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: With almost all the private telecom operators joining the tariff war in India, even the state run telcos are not far behind, with BSNL being the latest entry. The company has offered two options to the subscribers by reducing its national roaming charges- one of the offer is 49 paise per minute and the other is one paise per second.
Apart from the above two offers, there is also an offer which will charge 1 paise per second to calls on its own network and 1.2 paise per second to other networks while on roaming.
The pay per second billing system has given rise to the tariff war in India. According to BSNL chairman and managing director Kuldeep Goyal, the reason behind the slashing of roaming charges is to bring the advantage of BSNL’s network to its customers.
Roaming charges on Vodafone reduced by 50% in India
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Adding a new spice to the latest tariff war in the world’s fastest-growing cellular market, India, Vodafone Essar, reduced its roaming charges by more than 50% besides offering the option for per-second pulse.
The pay per second plan launched by TATA DoCoMo has made the other operators to join the war. Some are even coming up with other lucrative plans like 50 paise per minute, for all types of calls, local as well as roaming by Reliance Communications and to 60 paisa per minute roaming charges by Bharti Airtel.
Though the customers are benefiting a lot from this tariff war, the mobile operators are losing out on revenues. The stock prices of listed telecom operators like Bharti Airtel, RelCom and others are sliding.
One of the major reasons behind this war is to attract the new users as new operators are entering the market. Norway’s Telenor launch made it the 12th operator playing in the Indian market while, Arab’s second-biggest carrier Etisalat is planning to enter India.
