energetic
Joined: Jan 13, 2003
Posts: > 500
From: Athens, Greece, Europe, Earth,
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The true champions of the Olympic Games of Athens were not... athletes, but the networks of mobile telephony. This is what the International Telecommunications Users Group(INTUG) claims, an organisation which is based in Brussels and fights for the reduction of the telecommunication costs around the world. INTUG says that the networks of mobile telephony gain unjustifiable high pecuniary sums from roaming, the service which allows subscribers of a network to visit another country abroad and to use provisionally another network.
The organisation reported relatively, that if a subscriber of the American T-mobile who visited Greece in order to watch the Olympic Games, wanted to book a reservation in a local restaurant, then because of the cost of roaming, 1.21 Euros/min would be added to the cost of his call. Respectively, if a subscriber of Swiss Tele2Comviq, wanted to get in contact with his hotel in Athens, then roughly 0.36 Euros/min would be added in the cost of his telephone call.
Last week INTUG published in her web page a table, that presented the debits of 30 different networks of mobile telephony, for telephone calls, short written messages, as well as the access in the Internet. In these debits the cost of using the services of the Greek networks of mobile telephony where included.
Representative of INTUG pointed that the organisation does not believe that the prices were increased at the duration of the Olympic Games, however according to the elements that were assembled and published, all the networks of mobile telephony around the world charge much more from what they would be supposed for the service of roaming. At the same time, the organisation marked, that even new continuously alliances are created that promise the reduction of prices, the prices continue to increase.
The Agilent, a company that resides in USA and specialise itself in the sale of systems of measurement of quality and attribution of telecommunications networks, calculated that at least 5 millions users of mobile telephones where making calls, while they where in Athens for the Olympics. In these 2 weeks they were connected continuously with the Greek networks of mobile telephony and were charged for each incoming/outgoing call. The Agilent claims that no one of the 5 millions visitors of Athens knows how much they pay exactly for each call they make.
A lot of Olympic visitors preferred to communicate with their homeland sending short written messages. However in this case as well, they were called to pay 8 times more, from what the subscribers of Greek networks are paying, the INTUG says. The lowest cost to send an SMS is calculated in 0.3 Euros, while the subscribers of Telefonica Moviles were called to pay up to 0.75 Euros for each outgoing SMS.
And what about Internet? According to INTUG, most networks of mobile telephony allow the wireless access in the Internet via GPRS, debiting her customers from 5 to 20 Euros for each megabyte of information when roaming. The worst case, were the subscribers of the French Orange, for each megabyte of information they download during the visit to Athens, they paid 25 Euros!
The INTUG warns in any case the consumers, asking from the holders of pre-paid contracts to limit their "international" calls. At the same time it is recommended to travellers not to use their mobile to access the Internet when abroad, but instead to visit an Internet Cafe...
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Posted: 2004-08-31 13:10
