On 2007-01-29, Jon <spam@jonparker.plus.com> wrote:
> dcferguson@pacbell.net declared for all the world to hear...
>> > Removes competition between operators, who would not need to expand
>> > coverage.
>
>> I don't see why. In the USA most wireless carriers' contract plans
>> commonly allow roaming on other carriers' networks at no additional
>> charge when the home network has no coverage (PAYG is a little more
>> hit-and-miss).
>
> There is a huge difference in physical area between the USA and the UK.
> In the USA for one carrier to cover the entire USA would require a
> multi-billion dollar investment in infrastructure. In countries where it
> would not be viable for one company to cover it all then national
> roaming is a must.
>
> India is another example. Massive landmass to cover, many small
> operators covering bits of the country.

I guess the counter-example would be China, which has as much land
to cover but basically has two national mobile operators. I think
government policy may have more to do with it. If you auction nationwide
spectrum you get nationwide operators, if you sell the spectrum in
regional blocks you may still get big companies trying to buy up a lot
of it but you also get some regional operators. None of this changes
the problem with not having national roaming, however. While the UK
is not the USA, I've noticed that there still are rural areas in the
UK that probably don't have enough people to support investment
in enough towers to provide good coverage from all 5 carriers. If you
are a mobile company with a choice between spending your money to
become the third carrier with decent coverage in northern Scotland or
improving your 3G coverage in London, there's probably a lot more money
to be made from the latter. If you have national roaming this decision
doesn't effect your customers much; when they travel to the places you
decided not to build they just use whatever carrier is operating there.
If you don't have national roaming, however, your customers are SOL;
if they want reliable service everywhere they are better off carrying
a foreign SIM, which was the OP's point.

None of this was my point, however. My point was that I don't believe
national roaming reduces competition between operators at all. It certainly
doesn't in the USA. You don't make money where you don't have towers
with or without national roaming, so the incentive to expand coverage
exists independent of that. It's just that with national roaming, in
areas you haven't got around to yet or which have too few people to
support more than the carriers already present, your customers still
get service. Without it, your customers are out of luck.

>> In the UK there are only a few carriers, and all of them are potential direct
>> competitors everywhere, so I guess there's a lot less incentive to do
>> deals with each other.
>
> You just contradicted your first statement!

What statement? The statement that national roaming doesn't reduce
competition? I don't think so. And whatever keeps UK carriers from
doing roaming deals with each other, it clearly isn't an overabundance
of concern for the reliability of the service their customers receive.

Dennis Ferguson