Heavy data usage while roaming leading to a rise in bill-shock cases

The rise of high-profile bill shock cases, often due to heavy data usage while roaming, has caused consumer uproar and triggered regulatory activities in both the US and Europe.

In March 2009, the European Commission introduced new legislation aimed at eliminating bill shock while roaming in the European Union. European operators are now required to introduce maximum financial limits of €50 per month for data roaming charges.
They are also required to warn customers when 80% of this limit is reached.

Although similar legislation is not currently under consideration in Asia Pacific, bill shock incidents are affecting Asian consumers, particularly when they are unable to monitor their roaming usage while traveling.

In an environment in which flat-rate data plans are now giving way to tiered usage models, lack of transparency can deter potential subscribers from signing up for service, or prevent
them from using all the features that they are paying for-features that are designed to increase customer loyalty. For operators, this means that consumers will regularly breach caps without knowing it-resulting in unpopular coverage charges or bill forgiveness-where the operator forgives the extra bandwidth costs in order to maintain the customer relationship.

The Operator Challenge
To strike the right balance, operators must go beyond action purely driven by regulatory compliance and address the wider issue of how subscribers can personalize their services and manage their mobile activities on an ongoing basis.

Empowering subscribers with the flexibility and control to set-up their account options on the basis of their usage models, providing them with an easy-to-use, intuitive interface to change personal settings as needed is required. This includes enabling personalized data usage limits that can be set by individual subscribers, family plan members, and enterprise users.

Providing transparent access to account information, including usage-to-date and allowances that help subscribers understand their data usage and manage it more effectively over the billing cycle could be another step.
Enabling temporary override settings in response to specific events, such as attending a video conference call or watching highlights of a football match is yet another solution.

Offering data usage information in the form of proactive notifications to subscribers about thresholds including approaching monthly limits, additional charges to be imposed during international roaming, or downspeeding triggered by sustained high traffic could be useful. This proactive notification is essential to build consumer confidence in the adoption and use of data services.
As flat-rate plans are phased out in favor tiered and usage based pricing models, subscribers are more likely to take up plans where cost controls are built in. These cost controls foster greater consumer trust and satisfaction, which equates to less churn, a reduction in call center activity, and lower operating costs.

Lack of visibility into roaming charges has many users frequently turning data off while roaming abroad or outside of their home network. This results in lost revenue for operators. Offering consumers real-time control over roaming limits, not only enables operators to meet regulations but builds certainty and trust as well.

Conclusion
Operators stand to benefit by leading the evolution towards a more transparent and powerful framework that hands control of the mobile experience over to the consumer and allows operators to use their network resources more efficiently.
Unification of subscriber, application, and network information by applying a policy control approach enables mobile operators to manage data traffic, prevent mobile bill shock, ensure fair usage and give subscribers greater control of their mobile data experience.
Importantly, as voice revenues continue to fall, this smart approach creates additional revenue opportunities for operators by removing barriers to service adoption, and prevents the painful cost associated with bill forgiveness, whether on the home network or while roaming.

David Sharpley
The author is senior vice president, Bridgewater Systems
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in