AdaptiveMobile says adapt, don’t block international roamers

The European Union is not happy with the amount that operators charge their broadband customers when roaming in another EU country. There are rumblings of discontent and veiled threats of legal action to force changes in how roaming charges are implemented.

The EU wields a very big stick and is not afraid to take on all comers if it is unhappy with what it perceives as unfair consumer practices. These rumblings have led some operators to consider banning all customers from downloading data through their mobile broadband service while abroad, that way, sidestepping any potential mega-lawsuit from Brussels.

Security provider AdaptiveMobile has thrown its hat into the ring saying that mobile operators should be careful about considering an international banning strategy. And they argue that this strategy is a “simplistic view” and that the potential revenue loss would be significant as mobile broadband subscribers are willing to pay for a high-quality roaming service.

They go on to say that while it is understandable that operators don’t want to be perceived as creaming off excessive revenues from unwitting subscribers while abroad. Taking the approach blocking subscribers when they are on business trips or holidays abroad will result in highly significant revenue loss.

AdaptiveMobile says that instead of a blanket ban operators should make better use of their network assets and offer more personalised and individual international roaming services. By doing this, they can not only control subscribers’ mobile broadband usage in the UK and abroad, but also the type of content that is being delivered over their network to the user, in terms of blocking spam and viruses.

They could also save customers significant roaming fees by taking steps to better protect roaming users from unnecessary data usage, such as application and operating system updates, which can be up to 500Mb in size and in many cases are downloaded without user knowledge.