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Visitors to South Africa are seemingly getting fleeced after it was revealed that they pay extraordinary data rates when roaming on the country’s networks — with one carrier charging them as much as R281,290 per GB.

Roaming charges occur when a person uses their mobile phone or SIM card outside of their native network. Even the cheap rates in South Africa seem to be over ten times more than local costs.

Foreign mobile networks have a ‘roaming agreement’ with a local mobile operator, allowing the tourist to continue using their mobile number while overseas, but these agreements usually involve charges exceeding what consumers would normally pay in their home country.

However, it turns out telecommunications carriers are taking the piss with their prices for pay-as-you-go mobile data while roaming.

According to MyBroadband, American operator T-Mobile, for instance, charges R281 per MB in South Africa — or R281,290 per GB – while British operator O2 charges R173 per MB — or R173,530 per GB. Vodafone Australia charges users R12,480 per GB.

The “roam like at home” initiative, signed by the Southern African Development Community in 2007, hoped to address this issue, and in 2018 Cell C declared that it has “lowered the cost to foreign operators for international incoming data roaming by 89%, while the cost to Cell C from foreign operators has decreased by 49% over the same period.”

Cell C was a big supporter of this project, but clarified that roaming fees correspond to what international networks bill domestic carriers.

MTN endorsed the idea as well, stating that in an effort to promote data roaming, it and other Southern African operators have worked to lower these charges. Vodacom even appointed people “whose primary job it is to negotiate lower roaming rates with foreign operators”.

“Vodacom negotiates with various international roaming partner networks to secure favourable wholesale rates to our inbound roaming partner networks,” the operator’s spokesperson said.

“It is also important to note that the rates are based on roaming agreements and that Vodacom does not have control over what the foreign networks charge their customer.”

MTN agreed with Vodacom, saying “MTN does not set inbound roaming subscriber rates for visitors or foreign customers”.

“The roaming rates are set by their own operators.”

That may be true, but it still feels like foreigners are getting a raw deal when using our networks.

[source:mybroadband]