Big business puts mobile operators on notice over costs & service

by Stuart Corner

Monday, 12 May 2008

Page 1 of 2 ! Mobile data services are high priority for IT managers in global 1000 companies, but they are less than happy with roaming charges and with the level of support they get from mobile operators. According to market researcher Ovum, the need for greater visibility and control of mobile costs is holding back the uptake of mobile data services, which it says has been fairly slow in multinationals to date. "Multinational companies are putting mobile data first on their shopping list for telecoms services. But they say the high cost of mobile data plans could limit their rollout of services to employees. They also want mobile operators to improve billing and usage reporting." Ovum's conclusions are drawn from a survey it conducted among members of the Enterprise VPN Users Association (EVUA), a global ICT network user group whose membership is exclusively Fortune 1000 global companies. Ovum's findings will strike a chord with the Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) which this year announced  the "exorbitant" international roaming charges for voice and data services as a key focus issue for 2008 . Announcing the move at the group's annual conference in March, executive director Rosemary Sinclair, said: "When the Atug board discussed this issue a few weeks ago the energy in the room rose dramatically as example after example was given of staff travelling overseas coming home with bills for mobile services in the hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for just using services that they use at home." Mobile data is high priority for multinationals, according to Ovum, which is likely to lead to major multinationals putting increased pressure on suppliers to deliver the services they need. The top three budget priorities for CIOs to emerge from the  Ovum survey were mobile data, IP convergence, and overall cost management. But, Ovum says, there are signs that budgets are being directed towards mobile data in particular. "MNCs expect spending on mobile data to increase faster than any of the telecoms services they buy...Seventy one percent of EVUA members expect mobile data budgets to increase significantly over the [coming year]. Mobile data traffic is predicted to grow much more quickly than budgets, however." CONTINUED << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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