Media Release
No More Groaning About Roaming
Businesses Can Now Slash Their Mobile Roaming Costs
Sydney, 6 November 2002:
vRoam Global takes the lead in cutting the crippling costs of overseas mobile roaming with the launch today of its innovative service. Bringing together technology, process and regulatory insights to develop the vRoam solution, the vRoam team offers a unique and simple-to-use product. This will come as a relief to businesses stung by the prohibitive costs of overseas mobile phone use.‘We believed there had to be an alternative for companies who use their mobiles in foreign countries that would save costs,’ said Danny Nathanson, CEO of vRoam. ‘Travelling should never be an obstacle to being in touch with customers, employees and suppliers,’ he added. vRoam Global will save companies up to 50% compared to traditional roaming.
Due to the nature of the GSM network, an Australian mobile phone user in New Zealand pays approximately $7.78 to not receive a call (and to listen to their voicemail later), when their mobile is switched off, as opposed to $0.96 with vRoam! These calls that get bounced back and forth between the Australian network and the foreign network are called ‘tromboned calls’ and partly account for exorbitant mobile bills while travelling.
vRoam not only enables businesses to slash the costs of mobile phone usage overseas, but simultaneously eliminates costly tromboned calls.
Other advantages include being contactable on one’s Australian mobile number, and the option of a local number in the foreign country so that the user can be contacted directly. Using vRoam Global does not affect customers’ existing relationships with Australian mobile carriers - these stay intact.
A group of senior telecommunications and IT executives and entrepreneurs, motivated by their personal need to save on costs of roaming while on overseas business trips developed the vRoam Solution. This enabled them to save significantly on their roaming costs while remaining fully contactable.
vRoam’s service relies upon a unique Virtual Roaming™ process that has been developed and trialled for over a year with glowing feedback from users. To afford customers ultimate transparency and control, vRoam calls are billed monthly with a fully itemized account and in this way responds directly to business’ requirements.
The vRoam service is currently available to New Zealand, the UK, France, Belgium and South Africa.
vRoam Global has offices and partners in a number of countries globally and will be expanding into Asia and the US in the next few months.
‘Business people cannot control when they have to travel and when they need their mobiles. But they can control what they pay for their calls. vRoam enables that,’ Nathanson said.