Politicians and regulators have become more alert to the problems and action is beginning to be taken to introduce the necessary elements of competition. Businesses have increased their pressure on operators to deliver cost-effective global services. Nonetheless, operators seem loathe to lower roaming charges. The problem arises from the nature of the licences and the manner in which the operators have sought to exclude competition and to obtain the maximum leverage. The solutions lie is simple regulatory intervention to increase competition through carrier selection and MVNOs.
Competition law is also useful where, as is frequently the case, operators are jointly dominant.
There is a need to ensure that roaming on third generation networks does not create similar and worse problems. Moreover, because of the much wider range of services there are complex issues of data protection and privacy which must be addressed urgently. This page is maintained by the webmaster .