Business people and travelers from Australia have been held to ransom by the telecom operators such as Telstra, Vodafone and Optus when they are overseas and call home.

Take the example of a recent trip I made in the Caribbean:-

In an excerpt from my mobile bill, some of my calls back to Australia cost up to $7 a minute.

What really annoyed me was the calls in items 70,71,and 72 above, which were to fix a problem with a hotel reservation. The reservation company said they would fix the problem and it would not cost me any extra. What they did not realise was that I while patiently waiting on hold for them to fix their screwup, I was being billed $170.

A parliamentary committee has produced a report asking the government to step in and provide regulation to help bring the prices down.

It points out that some of problems are caused by the lack of buying power the Australian telcos have overseas, but there is also an element of the telcos being greedy and inflating prices. e.g the Telstra/bigpond roaming data rate is a huge $15 per Megabyte.

As well as this problem stifling Australian businesses, it ironically forces users away from the regular telcos, and over to providers such as Skpye when traveling overseas.

Articles:-

• Government told to act to cut international mobile romaing rates – IT wire
• Government called to regulate mobile roaming – Australian