Click below to
find interesting
information from our
December 2010b
newsletter
relating to:
Roaming
Travel
Mobile phones
Roaming
Trans-Tasman
damp
squib
As a result
of the recent
Trans-Tasman
joint government
inquiry into
roaming prices,
the NZ telecoms
industry has
produced a
pre-emptive.....damp
squib.
The
NZ
Telecommunications
Forum (an
industry body)
has just
released a draft
code of practice
addressing the
roaming issue.
It concludes
that telecoms
providers should
publish clear
prices for
roaming. Oh, and
"if commercially
viable", raise
consumer roaming
awareness at
airports and
travel agents
before consumers
depart.
Good luck
with that. We'd
point out that
clearer prices
don't
necessarily mean
lower prices.
Of course
vRoam customers
will always save
using our vSIM
cheaper
post-paid
alternative.
Travel
Travel-booking
changes
When
you buy
travel
from an
agent
(whether
a retail
agent or
on-line),
the
booking
is
normally
processed
through
a "GDS"
or
Global
Distribution
System,
that
feeds
available
seats
and
fares
back to
you via
the
agent.
These
GDSs
(there
are
three
big
ones:
Travelport
- better
known as
Galileo
in
Australia
or
Worldspan
in North
America,
Amadeus,
and
Sabre)
charge
agents
or
websites
a fee
for
bookings
made
through
them,
and also
charge
airlines
a fee
for
bookings.
Now a few
changes seem to
be afoot. In
June this year
Google acquired
ITA Software,
which aggregates
fare information
from all the
GDSs (Google may
use ITA to
display
comparative
fares). Now,
American
Airlines has
forced Orbitz -
an on-line
travel retailer
perhaps not
coincidentally
majority owned
by a GDS (Travelport)
- to stop
selling or
displaying their
fares on-line.
American
Airlines was a
GDS pioneer
(they started
Sabre, the first
GDS) and is
likely to force
Orbitz and other
websites to
connect directly
with AA rather
than via a GDS.
American
Airlines may
well be copied
by other large
airlines.
We expect
that 2011 will
see significant
changes in
travel-booking.
The GDS business
model is under
fire. As a
result,
increasingly,
consumers may
not have a full
range of
available fares
presented when
they check an
on-line site.
Mobile phones
Mobile network
outages
On December
13th, Optus
suffered an
outage of its 3G
network in
Sydney, which
prevented calls
over a 2-hour
period.
Such
outages are
actually quite
common. More
striking was
Vodafone's
widespread
outage earlier,
which lasted
more than a week
and severely
affected
subscribers (and
may yet prompt a
class-action
lawsuit), but
outages over a
small area
lasting perhaps
an hour or two
are frequent and
not normally
remarked-on.
Foreign
networks are
equally
vulnerable to
such outages -
perhaps more so
in crowded and
less-developed
countries, which
tend to have
high mobile
usage as they
are used in
preference to
fixed-lines.
Travellers
can be affected
by these outages
either when
roaming or when
using vRoam's
vSIM
service.
Fortunately (and
unlike domestic
non-roaming
subscribers),
our customers
usually have
multiple partner
networks they
can use, so can
simply switch
away from the
troubled network
and use our
service as
normal.
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