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New European regulation causes mobile operators to seek solutions

• Mobile operators are looking for a solution that will comply with the new roaming voicemail regulation while lowering their costs.

Zurich, Switzerland; June 24, 2009 – In response to a recently adopted regulation, European mobile operators are seeking solutions that will enable them to cease charging their customers for received voicemails while roaming and will reduce operators’ costs, according to top personnel at Starhome.

This search has been triggered by recently adopted EU legislation set to take effect next summer, which states that customers should not have to pay for voicemails while abroad.

“The mobile industry is a competitive one, and most operators cannot currently afford to simply stop charging for roaming voicemails without a negative impact on their revenue,” said Amit Daniel, Vice President of Marketing for Starhome. “In the past, the ‘international tromboning’ phenomenon has raised operators’ costs, which they have passed on to the customers. Today, a solution exists that eliminates this phenomenon and reduces operators’ costs.”

Trombones are created when a roamer cannot answer a call while roaming. The visited network routes the call back to the home voicemail system (the default setting for most roamers), forcing the roamer, or the operator, to pay international tariffs for voicemail deposits.

The high cost caused by international tromboning causes many roamers, and operators, to disable voicemail forwarding while roaming, or even turn off their handsets, which results in a loss of voicemail-generated revenue. Roaming subscribers, unaware of the high cost of voicemail-forwarded calls, often complain to Customer Care about the charges. This wastes operators’ human resources. Some operators solve this issue by absorbing the cost of the trombone, which impacts their bottom line, or passing it on to customers, which will soon be prohibited in the European Union.

Operators that are currently charging their roamers for the international trombone on voicemails will soon be required to absorb the international charges. These operators will pay approximately 0.35 Euros per minute for each voicemail deposit. An operator with approximately 25,000 outbound roamers per day will be losing over 1 million Euros annually due to voicemail deposit charges.

Mobile operators who have successfully implemented solutions that eliminate international tromboning report that they have increased customer satisfaction and reduced costs, while providing seamless caller access to voicemail, Caller ID retrieval and direct forwarding of calls to voicemail, or to any preset forwarding destination.

“Next summer’s deadline has mobile operators actively seeking solutions that will enable them to comply with the new regulation,” said Daniel. “This is truly a win-win situation because operators will select a solution that will allow them to comply with the regulation, lower costs and increase customer satisfaction.”

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