Mobile industry in denial over roaming

In the early days of mobile, execs liked to cite the promise of 'anywhere, anytime'. Today they like to talk of 'consistent experience.'

Speaking at a 5G session at MWC on Monday, Deutsche Telekom CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn said he'd like to get the same user experience in Barcelona, New York, Paris or wherever he might be.

It's a nice benchmark that operators and consumers can endorse, but ironically, it was pitched to an audience plugged into the internet by Wi-Fi. Sure, Wi-Fi is mandatory for any self-respecting conference, but the fact is roaming has always been a premium service.

For all the talk of users being glued to their smartphones, the extortionate prices for data roaming are a remarkably effective curb on internet consumption. The vast majority of travelling mobile users would rather log in to the cruddiest free Wi-Fi than risk turning on data roaming, making the idea of a consistent experience meaningless.

This is lost on cellco industry execs – and Jacobfeuerborn is certainly not alone – who never have to consider the price of their roaming service.

They also appear not to appreciate that that extortionate roaming rates make the case for OTT services in both financial and moral terms. It is laughable for operators to complain about 'free riding' OTT players when they takie advantage of the complex and non-transparent roaming process to gouge customers.

The industry is now girding itself for a fight with WiFi over access to unlicensed spectrum for LTE – a battle that inevitably will get political. How sympathetic will consumers and politicians be to price-gouging telcos over the cheap and cheerful Wi-Fi guys?

I was prompted in these reflections just before Jacobfeuerborn's presentation by my Hong Kong provider, alerting me that I had reached my daily roaming limit. That is a lavish 5MB for which I am taxed HK$68 ($8.76) a day. At that run rate I'd be paying HK$27,200, or nearly $3,500, for my monthly 2GB data package.

That's an absurd level of over-charging and for once EU regulators are one the right track in trying to eliminate it for the most part over the opposition of the telcos.

Roaming charges didn't create Whatsapp, iMessage and WeChat, but it they certainly make the consumer case for them. The low cost and huge capacity of 5G will be meaningless if operators don't use it to ensure that low-cost connectivity isn't just for the home market.

It also says something about the sense of unreality of mobile leaders who spend so much time fretting about threats to their business yet are oblivious to this heist of consumer cash and goodwill.