Business Travellers Expected to Pay £170 Million in International Roaming Charges this Summer
With India emerging as the 10th-largest business travel market in the world in a recent report called ‘CFO Innovation Asia’ which was commissioned by Concur Technologies, business travellers can expect to face international roaming bills of £320 per day when travelling to India*. With shocking data rates as much as £8 for the cost of 1MB, the pressure to for companies to reduce their roaming costs increases.
If the average business traveller uses 25MB of data, 60 minutes of inbound calls of calls, 15 minutes of outbound calls and 15 SMS messages per day, a 4 day business trip to India could cost a whopping £1280 in roaming costs alone.
The same amount of usage in India with a WorldSIM Roaming SIM cardwould be just £43.45 per day. With their recent launch of the Pocket WiFi, WorldSIM are able to reduce data roaming costs by as much as 85% while connecting up to 10 different devices.
Arif Reza, CEO of International roaming specialists WorldSIM said, “It’s not realistic for business travellers to rely on slow Wi-Fi, or worse, have no data connection at all. In order to remain productive while travelling; reliable and affordable data roaming is a must.”
According to the Global Business Travel Association website, productivity on the road is becoming a business essential. The use of smart phones amongst business travellers is very high and thus European companies are spending in excess of £2.4 billion a year in unmanaged connectivity costs**. Despite recent EU regulations to reduce data roaming fees, UK travellers are still estimated to encounter roaming costs of £500 million this summer, £170 million of which will lie on the shoulders of businesses***.
Reza continued, “WiFi isn’t always available – or reliable so it’s essential the businesses have a backup solution so they don’t have to foot the bill for thousands in unplanned roaming costs.”
In order to keep roaming fees under control businesses are advised to keep data roaming switched off unless they need to connect to the internet and to ensure automatic updates are stopped. Connect to WiFi where possible and put in place a usage policy to ensure roaming costs don’t spiral out of control.
For more information about reducing your international roaming costs, visit www.worldsim.com
*Based on rates from one of the leading UK mobile network providers.
** Information from the Wi-Fi Cost Index report, compiled by iPass
*** According to http://www.telecompaper.com/news/uk-businesses-face-summer-roaming-costs-of-gbp-170-mln–1024289
