Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the inquiry that was undertaken by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications. The Phoning home report was a significant report that inquired into international mobile roaming and examined the reasons why Australians pay so much for international mobile roaming. During the inquiry we found that many Australians simply had no idea as to the major obligations and costs that would be attributed to them when they were phoning home, so to speak.

Those of us who have travelled overseas will have no doubt about the utility of international mobile roaming, a service that allows you to use your own phone and phone number wherever you are in the world. Many of us also have stories of the shock of the mobile phone bill after travelling overseas. It can be absolutely frightening when you face an enormous bill after travelling internationally and using global roaming functions. No matter how careful you are in the lead-up to your trip and how careful you are in going through the issues with your service provider, there are so many intricate issues to deal with when it comes to mobile roaming. During the inquiry the committee was confronted with evidence of bills into the tens of thousands of dollars when people returned from their overseas trips having used international mobile roaming. The committee recognised that this is a very serious concern but also realised that it is a concern that does not affect everybody. However, when travelling internationally, with young children having their own mobile phones and everybody seeming to have an abundance of mobile telephony, it is wise for all people to understand the serious issues that affect them when they are using a mobile phone overseas.

One of the things that kept coming through in the evidence to the inquiry was that for the major players, the telcos, it does not really represent a big share of their revenue and that ensuring that consumers are reliably informed is not at the top of their list of things to do. Although there was universal agreement that this is an ugly area of telecommunications and that it can be frightfully expensive, of which many people are not aware, we learnt that there are many influences on that final bill that cannot be directly regulated or affected by our institutions and framework within Australia. The report recognised that not all of the factors associated with global roaming charges are within the influence of the telecommunications companies.

The committee found that the enormous cost of mobile roaming can be attributed to the technical nature of roaming—whereby, for example, the customer pays to receive calls—and to Australian telcos’ inability to negotiate favourable deals for their Australian consumers. To give a brief description of how this works, roaming charges and standard local calling arrangements are very complex. The complexity of roaming has an influence on the cost of roaming services. Of particular note is the fact that a traveller using roaming pays for both made and received calls. So, if you are overseas and using roaming, you actually pay for both receiving and making those calls. A traveller who receives a call but allows that call to go to voicemail, retrieves that message from voicemail and then returns the call is effectively paying for four international calls. This pricing arrangement is almost certainly responsible for a number of unexpectedly high bills. It is quite a complex arrangement.

I know that I was unaware of exactly how this process works. Many years ago when my children were overseas I would call them so that they did not have to bear the cost of the call. I would call my children, or friends and relatives when they were overseas, from my home number not realising that they were incurring significant costs for those calls. I am sure that most parents are unaware of this. They might have children overseas during gap years, as is the norm these days.

To improve the bargaining positions of Australian telcos, the committee has recommended a policy of regulating the framework for the wholesale cost of roaming through bilateral and multilateral negotiations with other countries, making sure that countries with the greatest number of Australian visitors are given priority. The committee also believes that competition can be enhanced within Australia. To do this, the committee wants temporary mobile number portability for roaming services to be implemented. This will allow consumers to choose the best roaming deal for their needs. The provision of information on roaming to customers can also be improved enormously. One recommendation among many made by the committee was that the Australian Communications and Media Authority facilitate a meeting with the Communications Alliance to discuss the development of a minimum standard for consumer information and awareness on roaming and potential costs, and that the Australian government explore opportunities to collaborate with the Australian Telecommunication Users Group ‘Roam Fair’ campaign.

There is a role for government in trying to put in place a framework that makes sure that charges at a wholesale level, which are generated offshore, are within some realistic parameters. That should be part of our diplomacy and advocacy when it comes to bilateral and multilateral activity. The committee heard horror stories from many people about how they were treated in various countries and the negotiations they had to undertake to find their way through a myriad of very complex issues.

The committee also recommends that, to ensure that travellers are aware of the alternatives to mobile roaming, these be incorporated into information in roaming provided by the Australian government. I believe the committee’s recommendations for the general public are practical and realistic. They start with a very basic call to consumers to be very alert, to avoid being very alarmed when you come home and realise that you have got the most significant bill, which you thought you controlled but which you definitely do not control. That comes from the fact that there are many charges that are paid to a visited network by the home network, irrespective of whether the home network recovers any fees from its customer. The home network operator therefore takes on many of those risks, but they are obviously passed on.

The committee heard evidence that the wholesale billing method can cause delays to the billing of international mobile roaming charges to the end user. Sometimes providers are unable to provide current balances of international roaming charges to their customers because of delays in receiving billing information from visited network providers. We heard that even people who rang up on a daily basis to check what their balance was and were given a balance could not be given a clear idea because those other costs had not been added to the equation. We heard many of those costs were delayed for maybe five to six months at a time. There was some discrepancy with that and some debate and argument about that between the companies. We certainly heard from users and their representatives that they did have major bills and they received those bills up to many months after they had returned home.

In its evidence, the ACCC determined that the mark-up component of roaming retail charges is not governed by any common set of principles, and that rather concerned me. They are saying that each home network operator is free to determine the size of the mark-up component of the retail price. I think it is relatively dangerous to not have a governing common set of principles in this. I think it was the ombudsman, who gave evidence in front our committee, who got caught out herself with additional charges when she was on a trip overseas and came back home. She is the woman of all knowledge, did everything right and ensured that she was well and truly covered, and on her return to Australia she found that she had a bill that she had not anticipated getting. Australians need to be very aware that this is a significant issue.

There can be no doubt that it will take time before Australians are offered really competitive roaming rates. But, hopefully, the committee’s recommendations will go a long way toward reducing the cost of phoning home in the future. Hopefully, the committee’s recommendations will be taken up and implemented. I think they are commonsense. They are certainly not recommendations that are way out or not achievable. It is most important that there be a regulatory framework that enables us to be sure that—as much as is possible—we can budget for and allow for the correct use of a mobile phone whilst we are travelling overseas.

I was very proud and pleased to be part of the communications committee report. I commend the chair for her dedication to the chosen task. I think all of the committee members worked well on a topic that is not an easy topic to get really involved in. It is quite complex. I commend every committee member who really put themselves in the position of questioning intently the people who appeared before our committee—the regulators, the providers and the telcos. I have already commended the chair, who has just walked into the room, for her great chairmanship of this committee. I was very pleased to be part of a very active and extremely well organised committee in producing this report, Phoning Home.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to commend to the House the recommendations of report of the Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts on its inquiry into the costs of international roaming, titled Phoning home. The inquiry was undertaken as a result of concerns associated with the cost of international roaming. The terms of reference for the inquiry were specifically aimed at finding out the basis for the costs associated with international roaming, the transparency of these costs to both regulators and consumers, and whether emerging technology could reduce the impact of such costs.

The use of international roaming on one’s mobile phone when travelling has become commonly accepted. This reflects the world we live in today—a world where people legitimately expect to be able to be contacted, even if they are overseas. Despite this, the costs of using international roaming are still high. It became evident during our inquiry that the cost of international roaming is much greater than normal mobile phone use. While we have seen mobile phone costs decrease here in Australia, we have not seen such a decrease in the cost of international roaming.

The committee heard evidence that many travellers were shocked at the cost of their phone bills upon returning to Australia. As the previous speaker indicated, sometimes these costs did not become evident for many months. This includes shock associated with voice calls but also, increasingly, shock associated with data downloads—now that the technology is getting quite sophisticated, data downloads were also billed at a very expensive rate and this was a matter of concern for many travellers.

The high cost of roaming is a result of both the complex technical treatment required to route roaming calls and the fact that the costs of roaming are determined by agreements between two network operators—the Australian network and the host network in the other country. So there are really two causes of the high cost of roaming. Firstly , there is the wholesale cost—that is, the amount charged by the foreign networks to the Australian providers. Secondly, there is the retail cost—the amount that Australian telco companies charge their customers. To address the first cost—the wholesale cost—the committee recommends that the government pursue bilateral and multilateral agreements with other countries to regulate the cost of roaming. The committee also suggests that the priority should be given to countries that large numbers of Australians visit.

An example of such a framework comes from the European Union, where the European Commission introduced roaming regulations in 2007. Its review in 2008 showed that the price of roaming has fallen significantly. I appreciate that the EU is a unique international institution and a very different community of interests than is present in our region. However, the European experience shows that international agreements could be possible and could be effective.

In the last century, the international community established the Universal Postal Union, which sets standards and duties for all international mail. It is surely not beyond us to conclude that a similar form of agreement for things such as roaming is possible in the 21st century. I accept that a global agreement on roaming charges and standards is an ambitious objective, so in the short term we can look at taking other action to reduce the costs of phoning home while overseas. One that comes to mind is a bilateral agreement with New Zealand, a destination to which 19 per cent of all Australians travelled in 2007.

A further problem for Australian consumers is that Australia’s market is not very large on an international scale. That means, as I just mentioned, that without internationally agreed rules Australian networks are generally price takers rather than price setters and they have limited alternatives to accepting existing pricing arrangements.

But addressing the wholesale cost of roaming is not the only story. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has determined that the mark-up component of roaming charges is not governed by any unifying set of principles. To address this, the committee has made recommendations that the ACCC introduce reporting requirements for Australian providers in relation to their international roaming services so that the public can know how the price of their roaming calls is being constructed.

This reporting ought to be complemented by the Australian Communications and Media Authority developing a minimum standard for consumer information on potential costs and could collaborate with the Australian Telecommunication Users Group’s Roam Fair campaign. I also believe that while it would not be fruitful to set price controls directly on roaming charges, it may be viable to introduce regulation to control, perhaps, the percentage mark-up that Australian firms are able to pass on to customers.

Finally, the committee spent considerable time and energy exploring other communication options for Australians overseas, including international calling cards, short message services, the use of local phone networks, voice over the internet protocol, email and hotel and public phones. All of these options should be promoted by the government when they provide information on roaming so that consumers realise that there are choices when they are phoning home. In this globalised world Australians travel for a whole range of reasons, but whatever the reason and wherever they go, they should be able to stay in touch. Phoning home should not be an ordeal and keeping in touch with the office or with friends or family should not be difficult. Global mobile roaming services have become a key way for Australians overseas to contact home but for too many the cost is neither productive nor expected. In our report there have been some simple recommendations and simple steps that we can take in the short term to make sure that roaming prices are fairer and that information is available. I look forward to working towards a long-term international agreement on roaming standards and prices.

I would like to conclude by taking this opportunity to thank the committee, particularly the chair, the member for Robertson, and also thank the secretariat for their work on the inquiry—they did a lot of work in putting together the report—and also thank the witnesses that appeared. They provided some invaluable information to the committee. It was a complex area and their information was vital in ensuring that we got our heads around the content. I commend the report to the House.

Debate (on motion by Mr Schultz) adjourned.