Australians are paying too much for roaming calls, with local carriers earning margins 300% higher than for domestic calls, a study has found.

In a report commissioned by the Department of Communications, consultants KPMG said Australian mobile users were paying on average A$2.75 ($2.39) per minute for a roaming call.

Of this price about 46 cents per minute was made up of wholesale costs “with the remaining AU$2.29 per minute being the retail margin charged by the Australian carrier,” KPMG said.

While the EU has extensively researched high mobile roaming charges, the KPMG study is the first by any Asia-Pacific market into the topic. It noted that other studies into had concluded that “retail prices paid by consumers for mobile roaming are excessively high.”

“Our own data suggests that it is most expensive for European Union (EU) SIM holders to roam from the EU to the Asia–Pacific including Australia.”

EU users roaming to Asia-Pacific paid on average A$4.54 per minute, more than double the rate paid by Asia-Pacific and North American users, who are charged A$1.90 and A$1.82 respectively.

By comparison, Australian SIM holders roam to the EU paid on average A$2.99.

Average Australian roaming margins are approximately 3.2 times higher than non-roamed margins, the study said. Optus charged 267% more for roamed compared with non-roamed calls, while Vodafone, Three and Telstra respectively charged 160%, 111% and 80% more.

The most expensive countries for Australian mobile users abroad were China, Germany, Indonesia, Spain and Portugal.

KPMG said the high prices were because of limited number of mobile carriers, poor transparency and the lack of commercial incentive to reduce wholesale prices.

Source:telecomasia.net