vRoam News - roaming, travel and mobile phones

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We publish news of interest to international travellers twice-monthly.

Click below to find interesting information from our latest newsletter about:

Roaming pricing won't change

Huge numbers of travellers use roaming, especially when on holidays. The first graph below shows the number of roaming travellers (and forecast) - this year will see the number of leisure roamers passing the business roamers.

And almost all of those leisure travellers complain bitterly about the cost of roaming. Websites are full of complaints and suggestions to mobile networks that customers cut back on roaming who would otherwise do more communicating - why won't those silly networks not drop the roaming price to something reasonable and make some money out of it rather than none?

Because they aren't so silly after all. Apart from the fact that they can't afford to drop the price (they make very low margins on out-bound roaming (what travellers pay to their home network), they also would shoot themselves in the foot. The main game in roaming is not the large numbers of leisure travellers, but the smaller number of business travellers - these are much more lucrative (see the second graph). Leisure roaming revenue is not growing much at all (those high prices...), but business roaming (many business travellers don't pay for their roaming - the employer does) is going through the roof. Why would mobile networks drop the price when it is going gang-busters?

Of course, there is an alternative, for leisure and business travellers.

Save more on roaming when you use our vSIM post-paid alternative.

Travel

How did that towel get in my bag?

Hotel guests may now want to think twice now before walking off with a bathrobe. Several companies are producing washable RFID chips that can be sewn into towels, robes and bed sheets, allowing hotels to keep track of their linens.

Hotels in the USA and Macau are currently using the chips. Rising cotton prices are a motivation: a bath towel that might have cost $5 last year could cost $8 or $9 now. High-end hotels that offer pool towels and fluffy bathrobes are good candidates for the technology.

One hotel reduced theft of its pool towels from 4,000 a month to 750, saving $16,000 a month, and monitors linen in real-time and order more, and optimises laundry bills.

Mobile phones

New ways to take money from customers

We certainly hope this doesn't happen in Australia, but mobile networks tend to copy each other globally.

A nasty new mobile money-grab has been spotted in the USA. Verizon (the largest US network) has announced that it is charging a $2 monthly fee for all customers who do not set up an "autopay" facility. In other words, if the customer does not set their account up to include a monthly automatic payment (direct debit), they have to pay an extra $2 (even if they have paperless billing etc set up to reduce Verizon's own internal costs).

That means you have less chance and inclination to examine and dispute your monthly bill (you've already paid it, after all, even before you read it). A simple money-grab, in our opinion.

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