A couple of months ago I was on a business trip in Rome; regretfully I needed to make some “roaming” calls without using a calling card or a callback service. Yes, I was aware that the price would be high), so to keep my calls short, (less than 30 seconds each), I simply asked people to call me back.

Two months later I received the bill, it was high! Being an RA person I checked if I was billed correctly. As I suspected I discovered that I had not been billed according to my tariff plan but to a higher price than in my tariff plan (Service providers, please do not neglect your Rating and Billing verification as part of your Revenue Assurance activities).  Moreover, according to my SP provider’s published policy, all the calls were rounded to the next minute. 

The European Community is taking some steps to reduce roaming abuse within Europe  but at this époque and at this price level (I paid 4 Euros per minute, even for a “10 seconds minute”) I would expect policies such as rounding to the next minute to disappear entirely (regulation ?!), and I would expect to get notice of the price when placing the call. This should be made a requirement.  So all calls higher than, let’s say 50 cents per minute, will require a warning message to be played, for free, warning the customer of the call’s cost. This is similar to what Ofcom are imposing on calls to “personal numbers”.

I am certainly not a fan of regulating everything, but when roaming customers are charged substantial sums, without being able to really compare, or accept prices (and do not tell me before placing a roaming call, to call or go to the web site of my operator and check prices), then if market power is not driving the market to the right direction someone should.Gadi