African Mobile Roaming Charges - One of the Last Forms of Legal Daylight Robbery

London — Last week the European Commission announced that it will force mobile companies to lower their excessively high international roaming charges and scrap all roaming charges for receiving calls abroad. A fortnight ago the annual meeting of the Arab ICT Regulators Network heard a presentation of a study of Middle East roaming charges that covered parts of North Africa. It also concluded that in the field of roaming that there was an absence of real competition and this was a strong disincentive to operators to negotiate lower prices. Sub-Saharan Africa's solution? An expensive African Telecommunications Study to develop a single SIM card that can be used across the continent. Russell Southwood looks at the findings of the Egyptian study and asks whether Africa's regulators can work with the European Commission to address the rates charged by the international mobile operators.

Evidence provided by the European Commission showed that roaming rates vary from US6 cents to US$3.94 a minute on the basis of a four minute call and that one unnamed UK operator had increased the price of calling the UK within the EU from US$1.04 a minute to US$1.48 per minute again on the basis of a four minute call.

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