Telecom Lead Asia: In a bid to provide consumers with
visibility of their roaming charges, the GSMA has launched new Roaming
Transparency Initiative at the Mobile Asia Expo.
Along with visibility to roaming charges, the initiative
will also provide greater transparency in usage of mobile data services when
travelling abroad.
“The initiative will help to promote an even broader
adoption of principles that will offer a more transparent and uniform
experience for billions of consumers, wherever they travel,” said Franco
Bernabe, chairman of the GSMA and Chairman and CEO of Telecom Italia Group.
The world’s leading 24 operator groups have agreed to
undertake a number of measures.
Under the initiative, these mobile operators will send
text messages to remind customers of their data roaming tariffs when they
arrive in another country and turn on their mobile device.
Additionally, operators will also implement a monthly data
roaming spending limit to help consumers manage their roaming bill.
The mobile operators will also send alerts when data
usage of consumers draws near the limit. Under the measurement, operators will
also suspend data service temprorily when usage exceeds the spending limit.
In the first phase of this initiative, these operators
and their group subsidiaries have agreed to implement these data roaming
transparency measures by the end of 2012, covering more than 4 billion mobile
connections worldwide.
The operators are America Movil, AT&T, Axiata Group
Berhad, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, France
Telecom-Orange, Hutchison 3 Group, KT Corporation, MTS, Qtel, SK Telecom, Smart
Communications, SoftBank Mobile Corp., Tata Teleservices Limited, Telecom
Italia Group, Telefonica, Telekom Austria Group, Telenor Group, TeliaSonera,
Verizon Communications, VimpelCom and Vodafone Group.
The GSMA will also work to promote the adoption of
these guidelines across its full membership base of nearly 800 mobile operators
globally.