Starhome claims key to mobile data conundrum

Starhome claims key to mobile data conundrum

Roaming specialist outlines flexible approach

By Tony Dennis: Tuesday 24 January 2006, 21:50 EXTORTIONATELY HIGH data roaming charges have effectively killed many new mobile market segments before they've even been introduced.

However, roaming services specialist, Starhome, believes it has the solutions in its portfolio which could help operators escape the current 'tariff trap'.

One of its products is differentiated billing. This ides enables operators to set different price levels depending on the type of traffic.

Currently consumers are charged on a 'per megabyte' basis for all data services. With differentiated billing they can set different charges for ringtones, pop videos and email messages.

This would overcome the ludicrous situation where it would cost around £100 to download a single iTunes track while roaming in the USA as opposed to 99 pence at home on the Internet.

The other weapon in Starhome's arsenal is its Data Charge Advisor. This would inform a roaming subscriber exactly how much it has just cost to send a picture (MMS) message back home, for example.

At present consumers are supplied with meaningless information such as how many megabytes they've consumed out of a monthly total.

Starhome's Alon Barnea, veep for business development, claims that the roaming market is huge. Only 50 per cent of travellers ever actually bother to 'roam' with their mobile phones [ie, use their mobile phones outside their home country].

He also reckons there are massive disconnects between the different departments within the typical GSM operator. The person in charge of roaming, he says, thinks purely in terms of voice services rather than data, while the person in charge of promoting content - such as music videos - doesn't consider roaming at all.

"The industry hasn't learnt at all," Barnea suggested. "The same mistakes that were made with WAP have been repeated with GPRS and are now being repeated with 3G."

In other words, mobile operators still haven't cracked how to sell data services properly