Business travellers want to use mobiles overseas more, but high cost deters: survey

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 19 April 2011 18:09

Your IT - Mobility

Generally speaking, the more something costs, the less people buy. Not surprisingly, a survey has found that business travellers would like to use their mobiles more to keep in touch with customers and colleagues, but the high cost of roaming is a barrier.

Surveys carried out on behalf of organisations that stand to benefit from the results should always be taken with a pinch of salt, but that doesn't mean they can't be interesting or useful.

So with an appropriate quantity of NaCl in hand, we note a finding that 52% of Australian organisations have lost business through not staying in touch with colleagues or clients when abroad.

That was the headline result of a June 2010 survey of 250 Australian business travellers and 100 Australian IT decision makers carried out by Vanson Bourne for multi-national mobile provider Tru.

Among the other findings, 94% of Australian business travellers feel that the expectation for them to be in contact with the office (and vice versa) by both phone and email has increased over the past few years.

But keeping connected via a mobile can be every expensive thanks to the extremely high mobile roaming charges.

The survey found business travellers are using various strategies to keep those costs under control, including reducing the use of email and the web, making shorter or fewer phone calls, and using landlines or local SIMs to minimise call charges.

Naturally, Tru has an answer - see page 2.