The need for cheaper mobile phone bills
One of the worst things about coming back from a holiday abroad is receiving your mobile phone bill and seeing how much international calls have cost you. The high cost of making foreign calls on your mobile is also one of the downsides of living in one country, when family and many friends live in another.
In a country such as the UAE, where there is such a high percentage of expats, the need to keep in touch with loved ones makes our mobile phone more of a lifeline than a luxury, so it’s a relief to see that the tricky subject of high charges is at last being addressed.
Fintan Healy, who is in charge of regulating such things at the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, says it’s an area that “has to be worked on” because consumers think the charges are too high. And he’s right.
Elsewhere in the world, notably Europe, international call charges became cheaper this summer after a EU legal battle over roaming charges. As a result, the price of calls throughout the EU was slashed by about 60 per cent. For once, the needs of the consumer were put before the commercial interests of the network operators. One watchdog described the 200 per cent profits they creamed off for mobile calls made while in another EU country, and the 300 per cent for calls received as “roaming rip-off”.
Clearly, the European phone companies were in no hurry to bring down the charges themselves and it took EU intervention before they reluctantly agreed. It may well be a case of a government decision here, too.
For many of the poorer-paid members of our society, keeping in touch with parents and children is what keeps them going from day to day as they work hard to send money back home to countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines. They are the hardest hit by high charges, and the least able to afford them.
It would be a relief to us all to be able both to see and hear our loved ones on Voice Over Internet Providers such as Skype, so it is good to know that the subject is at least being discussed by the authorities. For many, without regular access to laptops and computers, that will never be an option anyway.
My firm belief is that if Du and Etisalat slashed the cost of phoning “home” we’d all make many more calls and stay on the phone much longer. I certainly would.
The survey carried out for the TRA that revealed increasing consumer dissatisfaction was a small one, although it was a start. Now we need to delve deeper and do some more comprehensive market research on several levels, not least the humanitarian one. It would be a kindness to help the neediest among us to whom the sound of the voice of a loved one makes life worth living.
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