If you use foreign mobile phone networks for Internet access, you should solve data packets if necessary to avoid high bills at the end of the month. A current analysis by the Foundation for Consumer Protection at roaming tariffs in popular holiday countries shows why this recommendation is worthwhile. This newspaper has had an exclusive look at the results.
Consumer advocates have had the large mobile operators compare the standard data roaming charges with the prices of the cheaper packs. Salt and UPC catch the eye. At Salt the standard tariff can be up to 975 times higher than the fee for the data package, depending on the price model, at UPC up to 263 times. At the market leader Swisscom, the standard tariff is up to 33 times more expensive than the package price.
Transferred to another industry such as gastronomy, this means that if the customer chooses a coffee option in the restaurant, they receive the drink at a price of CHF 4.20. However, if the consumer forgets to book this special tariff or is not aware of this regulation, the coffee – analogous to the Salt example – costs up to CHF 4,095.
For consumer protection, this is a clear indication that the providers generate high margins when roaming: “The comparison shows that the telecommunications providers sometimes charge completely overpriced prices for cell phone use abroad,” says André Bähler, head of politics and business. The organization calls for the Federal Council to set price caps for roaming tariffs in the Telecommunications Ordinance.
Price watcher looks
The price monitor also keeps an eye on roaming. He regularly commented on this and would “use every opportunity to fight excessive prices,” says Stefan Meierhans.
Since June 2017 at the latest, the topic has finally reached local politics. Since then, the European Union has prohibited mobile operators in the EU from charging roaming surcharges. Switzerland cemented its position as a high-price island.
Representative surveys show that the Swiss prefer to abolish roaming charges. But the National Council rejected such an initiative last spring. The opponents argued that roaming was already included in many new subscriptions or that there were discounted roaming options available.
The handling of options is not always customer-friendly, says Oliver Zadori from the comparison portal Jungle Compass. Not only does the customer have to estimate roughly how much data they will consume before leaving abroad. “Because the larger the package, the lower the price per megabyte is,” says Zadori.
Another annoyance is that most data packets expire after 30 days and another option has to be paid for. Jungle Compass created the analysis for consumer protection. A fair comparison of roaming charges for voice telephony is not possible due to the inconsistent price models.
The Federal Council, in turn, refrains from capping the roaming tariffs in its revised implementing provisions for the Telecommunications Act. Instead, the telecommunications providers should bill for calls to the second and not be allowed to round up to a whole minute. The same principle applies when it comes to data consumption: billing is now to be carried out per kilobyte and no longer rounded up to the megabyte. Consultation on these proposals is currently ongoing.
Roaming sales of CHF 500 million
Roaming charges are incurred so that the customer of a Swiss mobile phone provider can make calls via a foreign network and is connected to the Internet. In 2017, the local providers generated almost half a billion francs in roaming.
However, this income has been declining for eight years. The reasons are the increasing price pressure and the possibility to make calls over the wireless Internet instead of over the foreign mobile phone networks.
Salt confirms on request that the standard tariffs for data roaming in the EU are higher than the prices with a roaming option for certain prepaid offers. The company is in the process of checking and revising the tariffs, particularly in the case of the prepayment model.
UPC points out that customers abroad can avoid the standard tariff – for example with the possibility to connect to 10 million wireless Internet access points free of charge worldwide.
A UPC spokeswoman says: “If our customers still use the standard tariff, the monthly cost limit is limited to CHF 200 when the subscription is set as standard.” This block should protect customers from excessive fees. This cost limit can be adjusted individually.
Created: 1/17/2020, 9:49 AM
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