The New Zealand and Australian governments are teaming to look into data roaming “bill shock” - the syndrome where someone uses their mobile phone for email or web surfing overseas, then inadvertently racks up a bill running into thousands of
The New Zealand and Australian governments are teaming to look into data roaming “bill shock” - the syndrome where someone uses their mobile phone for email or web surfing overseas, then inadvertently racks up a bill running into thousands of dollars.
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As first reported by NBR, Communications Minister Steven Joyce first discussed joint regulation of transtasman roaming with his counterpart in Australia, Senator Stephen Conroy, in June last year.
The Ministry of Economic Development has since began an investigation (the Commerce Commission has no jurisdiction beyond New Zealand).
Today, at the CommsDay Auckland Summit 2010, Mr Joyce revealed the first concrete step in the data roaming investigation: he and Mr Conroy will soon deliver a “preliminary discussion document”.
In terms of timing, Mr Joyce would only say the release of the document was “imminent”.
The minister said it was too early to day if the document would recommend regulation.
Mr Joyce detailed why he thought an investigation was warranted.
While it was hard to find a domestic mobile plan that charged more than $100 per gigabyte, when roaming it was easy to rack up a $10,000 or even $30,000 charge for the same amount of data.
“The prices themselves are relatively high,” said Mr Joyce. More, charges needed to be more transparent.
Phone companies did state their international roaming charges, but in kilobit per second and megabyte per second terms. Many people did not know how these corresponded to everyday mobile data use, such as sending an email, Mr Joyce said.
