Bill shock still a big issue

Despite the European Commission introducing measures to force down the rates mobile users have to pay for using their services across the EU, bill shock elsewhere in the world, particularly in the US, is still an issue.

According to the Mobile Workforce Report, conducted by wifi hotspot operator iPass, more mobile employees are shutting off their devices’ data connections when they travel in 2012 compared with 2011. Around 23 per cent of mobile workers said they always turn off data roaming when they travel, up from 18 per cent last year.

The survey of nearly 1,200 mobile enterprise employees worldwide also revealed that an increasing number of workers felt data roaming prices are too high; more than eight out of ten (82 per cent) of mobile workers said that their operator charges more than ten times more as much for data roaming ($20/MB) than the value that they consider to be fair ($1/MB to $2/MB).

Many mobile workers said they had personally dealt with these prices. Nearly half (43 per cent) of workers have received data roaming bills they felt were too high and employees said they encountered an expensive data roaming bill 1.4 times a year on average. The survey also revealed that the average data roaming bill shock for a mobile worker is $1,089.14.

“Prohibitively high mobile data roaming charges are curtailing employees from being able to carry out basic online tasks, impacting their ability to be productive. The payoff for solving the data roaming challenge is potentially great,” said Rene Hendrikse, VP EMEA at iPass.