Comments on: Trans-Tasman mobile roaming

By: trout

trout — Fri, 28 May 2010 04:43:34 +0000

I gave up on roaming – too expensive and unreliable. Am in the States now – bought a cheap Nokia AT&T prepay with $25 free calls. Calls to NZ $1 per minute, texts 20c and SMS reports of call costs after each call. Suits me.

By: Clint Heine

Clint Heine — Thu, 27 May 2010 20:56:53 +0000

Overseas Telcos always seem to text you when you cross borders, it’s disappointing the Kiwi ones won’t!

I see Leftrightout still doesn’t get it. No surprises there!

By: TG

TG — Thu, 27 May 2010 11:37:07 +0000

The report says a common telecommunications market would solve these problems, but would be something of an over-reaction to this problem. Frankly, I fail to see why telecommunications isn’t included in moves to a single market when almost everything else is. In fact, it seems to be an important thing to include as it is not just something that would free up trade and allow companies to operate more easily, but would also change perceptions amongst the general population, showing that Australia and NZ are a single market and not two completely foreign and separate states.
The potential benefits of a single telecommunications market could include:
- end to international roaming charges (obviously people can escape these now by buying separate SIM cards, but this is a poor solution if one relies upon people calling your local number, e.g. for business purposes)
- national rather than international calling rates across the Tasman (and inclusion of both countries in phone plans that include unlimited national calls)
- integration of phone numbering schemes (i.e. dialling Auckland from Melbourne would be no more difficult than dialling Sydney, accessed by a regional area code)
- greater competition as Australian companies can operate in NZ and vice versa.
Movement across the Tasman is pretty easy and could be no more difficult than domestic travel (i.e. no passport, no customs controls, flights from domestic terminals) if a common border is established. It would be ridiculous if movement of people was as easy as if within a single country, but mobile roaming charges remained at their current ridiculously inflated rates.

By: gazzmaniac

gazzmaniac — Thu, 27 May 2010 06:02:35 +0000

Instead of forcing telcos to cooperate with each other, you could always buy a sim card when you get to Australia to take advantage of the much cheaper calling and data rates.

By: LeftRightOut

LeftRightOut — Thu, 27 May 2010 04:46:38 +0000

Here we go again, the right wing interfering with the operations of the free market that they keep telling us is so wonderful.

IF the free market was so wonderful, surely this would be a non issue.

As it is, Vodafone et al are free to charge what they like and you are free to take your business elsewhere if you don’t like it. Isn’t that what you always preach?