A small global mobile service provider has criticised Telstra for not making bigger concessions to more transparent mobile roaming charges, after the latter released fixed pricing for calls back to Australia for 16 countries.

In a media release, vRoam Global chief executive officer Danny Nathanson said both Telstra and Vodafone had started to move in the right direction but had not gone far enough.

"Australia is lagging behind other countries, where carriers have had to provide consumers with pricing indexes for years," he said. "In this country, global mobile roaming is one of the few services where you only find out how much you will be charged after using the service. It's a consumer's right to know in advance how much it costs to roam."

"Telstra's local calls while roaming are still subject to huge variations with no fixed rates and there are still hundreds of countries with no fixed pricing structure."

As an example, he cited the costs for a one minute call from the US to Australia while roaming: $2.30 (Vodafone), $2.72 (Optus), $3.08 (Telstra) and $1.51 (vRoam).

Vodafone was the first Australian carrier to release a set pricing structure for mobile roaming customers in June this year.

Nathanson said his company had made a submission to the ACCC's inquiry in June last year, calling for greater transparency in roaming pricing structures and an industry Code of Practice. The competition watchdog has still not brought down any findings.

By Online Staff