OXFORD, United Kingdom-Conferences are an integral part of the mobile communications scene, an ideal platform for catching up with the latest developments and a chance to meet old friends and make new ones. But such networking opportunities have one inevitable consequence. A raging hangover the next morning.
At European conferences this is not a major problem. A few cups of good strong coffee during the break and you are ready once more to enter the networking fray. At U.S. conferences, however, the road to recovery is more arduous. The colored water that masquerades as coffee in the United States is incapable of producing the desired healing effect. The intake necessary to produce a result would cause premature death by drowning.
Other significant differences exist between telecommunications conferences in Europe and the United States. During conference breaks in Europe, the audience spills out of the auditorium to spread itself around the outer walls of the conference venue as if in a giant centrifuge. Everyone is talking on their mobile phones, seeking locations in the building with the strongest signal.
That doesn’t happen in the States. Apart from handfuls of forlorn visitors from Europe making desperate phone calls to locate a decent coffee shop, there is hardly any mobile phone activity at all.
The reason of course is Calling Party Pays (CPP), the ubiquitous system in Europe that has driven mobile phone numbers onto every business card. U.S. business cards rarely carry mobile phone numbers. U.S. mobile phone numbers are like secret codes, released only to an inner circle of friends and colleagues. In the United States, the unfortunate called party has to pay the call charges.
But CPP is running into a problem in some European countries. The problem is not that the calling party pays, but that the calling party pays too much.
Some consumers in Europe are being charged up to six times more for calls to mobile numbers than for calls to fixed numbers. Interconnection fees between some fixed and mobile networks in Europe can be up to 14 times higher than the interconnect rates between fixed networks.
This is not what the European Commission likes to see. Not what it expected to result from the liberalization of European telecommunications and the introduction of competition. Spurred on by complaints about the level of call charges to mobiles, the European Commission announced an inquiry into the situation back in February. The initial results of the inquiry were scheduled to be released in April. They finally came at the end of July; some operators had not been particularly cooperative in supplying the required data.
As a result of its probe, the Commission has pointed the finger at 14 cases it believes indicate the presence of potentially excessive or discriminatory pricing. Such instances could be contrary to European Union law, which requires operators to base fees on actual costs. To no one’s surprise, most of the alleged culprits are to be found among the incumbent fixed network operators, the ex-PTTs. In-depth investigations have been launched, either by national regulatory authorities or by the European Commission itself.
The United Kingdom’s regulatory watchdog Oftel (Office of Telecommunications) has referred the matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. U.K. incumbent fixed network operator British Telecommunications plc imposes a retail price of 30 pence a minute for calls to the mobile networks. This compares with fixed-to-fixed rates of less than 10 pence per minute for long distance and less than 5 pence per minute for local calls.
Oftel believes the fixed-to-mobile calling charge should be less than 20 pence per minute.
The Monopolies and Mergers Commission already has been granted a three-month extension to the end of the year for production of its report. The issues involved are wide-ranging and complex, it says, and must include examination of the underlying conditions of competition relevant to calls to mobiles.
The investigating teams clearly are going to need a plentiful supply of coffee. It is unlikely they will be ordering it from a mobile coffee shop.
