Last month MACH launched its Roaming Margin Analysis solution,
the industry’s first automated solution that allows mobile operators to quickly
compare their wholesale roaming inter-operator tariffs (IOTs) with interconnect
termination rates. Morten Brøgger,
global CEO, MACH shares insights into roaming markets and challenges to
customers.

How do MACH’s offerings
support 3G revenue growth and benefit operators?

New services are available to mobile operators with 3G,
such as the MACH Rerating, Retail Roaming and Data Roaming Engine Solutions,
which are stimulating usage and driving revenue growth. These types of
solutions enable operators to offer bespoke tariffs based on the usage patterns
of their subscribers or on the type of device a business wishes its employees
to use abroad – such as a tablet – while also offering them a greater
transparency of cost.  By using these types of solutions, operators will
be able to move from a wholesale roaming business model to a retail roaming
business model and pitch new service offerings tailored to their consumer and
enterprise customer.

What are the new trends of
roaming revenues you have observed after emergence of 3G?

It is too early to comment on new roaming revenue trends
due to 3G in India as operators are still launching 3G networks. 3G naturally
is expected to bring higher speeds for data exchange and a slew of smart
applications that will influence and change how commerce and trading is
practiced today. Video telephony and multimedia applications will change the
way we communicate. Roaming revenues will shift from being highly wholesale to
retail driven, and data traffic is expected to overtake voice traffic in actual
revenues by 2015.

What opportunity do Mobile
operators have today to take data roaming into the mainstream and generate
significant revenues?

With 3G, there is huge potential to take data roaming
into the mainstream and generate significant additional revenue for operators.
For example, right now 76 percent of consumer users in India do not use
their phone at all when roaming internationally – not even to send an
SMS.  More than 90 percent of Indian subscribers switch off their data
connection while roaming internationally because of the fear of bill-shock. And
in some operators, only 5 percent of the data roamers consume 90 percent of the
data. Consider that an average subscriber today uses 300 times more data when
on their home mobile connection than when they are
roaming.       

How can customers overcome the
problem of Bill shock?

The key challenge is to provide more transparency of cost
in order to remove the fear of bill-shock amongst subscribers. Using MACH’s
Data Roaming Engine (DRE), operators can define data packages to fit any
application and rate the services differently according to the end user group
the operator is targeting. They can offer users the services they want to use
while abroad: for the holidaying consumer there could be Facebook-only access,
while the small business user could opt for Email-only access. The DRE allows
operators to offer services highly tailored to the needs of their subscribers,
driving uptake while reducing the final cost to the end user and empowering
them to select the services they want to use abroad.  Plus, the DRE is standard-agnostic
and can be used for pre-paid accounts, opening up new markets for operators.

This type of micro-segmentation would seem to be a key
tool in removing the fear of bill-shock. If a subscriber is given the choice
when they arrive at their destination of signing up for specific packages via
app or SMS, they are handed the certainty that they will only consume the data
on the package they have subscribed to – whether this is service-specific like ‘Facebook’ or bandwidth-specific. In effect this is the concept of pre-paid
data services for post-paid customers.

What
can the government do in their telecom policies to maintain roaming revenues?

Healthy
market competition and well run businesses are the key factors to maintaining
or stimulating roaming revenues. Only where healthy market competition is
minimal or absent, should telecoms policies or regulation be introduced to
introduce or stimulate this.

Is there need for innovative and
transparent pricing models with lower costs for end users by operators?

Yes there is a definite need to introduce transparency
and remove the fear of bill-shock amongst subscribers. For example, there is
increasing confusion over data roaming charges – users have little
understanding of what constitutes a ‘megabyte’. This is leading to a demand for
more transparent, service-based charging packages which are tailored to match
subscribers’ individual needs. In practice, this could see business users, for
example, have an email-only package which would give them access to their inbox
at an economy rate, with additional services such as web surfing carrying a
higher cost.

In the enterprise sector, if an operator is able to
understand which groups of individuals within a business travel the most, where
their trips are to and from, as well as the type and amount of data they
consume, they will be able to offer a highly tailored retail roaming data
package for that group based on their specific needs.  In a company which
has senior managers regularly travelling between Delhi and New York or London,
for instance, the operator could offer a tailored voice and data package that
includes special rates and usage incentives to cover the time spent abroad.

What
is the status of your recent roaming margin analysis solution? What are your
new plans?

Last month MACH launched its Roaming Margin Analysis
solution – the industry’s first automated solution that allows mobile operators
to quickly compare their wholesale roaming inter-operator tariffs (IOTs) with
interconnect termination rates. It helps operators ensure that roaming traffic
is not terminated at rates that are below interconnection cost. It gives
operators a clear picture of the true wholesale margins they are making on
international roaming, enabling them to optimise their volume commitments and
hence, their roaming business operations.

By Rashi Varshney
[email protected]