No cost relief for mobile users by the border

MOBILE phone users caught by roaming charges in the Border counties will get no immediate relief from exorbitant bills after ministerial talks with the phone companies ended only with agreement that further talks will take place.

Minister for Communications, Noel Dempsey, insisted, however, that the meeting was a “significant step” and said he had asked for a progress report to be sent to him by the end of December.

Mr Dempsey met with his Northern Ireland counterpart, Angela Smyth; representatives of Irish and British mobile phone companies, and the telecommunications regulators for both territories in London yesterday to discuss the problem.

The minister said afterwards the meeting was “very constructive”. “The mobile phone companies have recognised the problem of inadvertent roaming and that consumers are disadvantaged by this,” he said.

He also said the companies, which included Vodafone, O2, Meteor, Orange, 3 and T-Mobile, had given a commitment to “immediately engage in a process to look at the range of issues involved and to propose solutions.”

Tens of thousands of mobile phone customers are believed to be caught in the trap of incurring international charges every time they cross the Border for work and leisure.

Many living in the Border region are snared without even crossing the administrative boundary when their phones pick up on an intermittently stronger signal from inside the six counties. Residents of the North experience similar problems when moving inside the Border on the Northern side.

Comreg, the Irish telecommunications regulator, and its British equivalent, Ofcom, set up a joint working group in 2004 to examine this and other cross-Border communications issues and issued consumer guidelines about how best to avoid incurring accidental charges but up to now have not had the practical involvement of the phone companies.

A joint Comreg-Ofcom survey earlier this year found that only some companies set all-island tariffs for contract customers and all charged international roaming rates for pre-pay customers.

They found some phone users were paying up to six times extra for a call depending on how close they were to the Border or when they passed over it while even text messages were also charged at the international rate.

Mr Dempsey said both the Irish and British governments were committed to addressing the problem. “It is simply not acceptable that thousands of people who travel north and south every day are subjected to high, inadvertent roaming charges when they call or text on their mobile,” he said.

The two governments are also under external pressure to resolve the problems which have been raised in Europe where cross-Border charging agreements are being worked out across a number of adjoining member states.