http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/int...#tab-irpricing
I noticed they're "simplifying" international roaming rates by going
from each destination country's telco having its own rates to one rate
for the entire country. In their Customer Terms they claim they're now
going to charge us the "Weighted Average Cost calculated by Telstra for
the Country in which the call is made (including any surcharges or
taxes)".
Presumably they're weighting the average by the cost of the most popular
telco in the destination country (best coverage etc). Right?
Maybe not... Even for countries where Telstra only have _one_ roaming
agreement in place, somehow the "average price" across that one carrier
has mysteriously gone up, not stayed the same. eg,
Seychelles - one telco - "weighted average" national price has gone up 96%
Georgia - one telco - "weighted average" national call price up 60%
Guernsey - one telco - "weighted average" Austrailan price has gone up 32%
Last tiem I checked, when you're taking the average of a sample space of
one value, no matter how much you "weight" that one value, the average
still stays the same as the value itself...
Even for countries with more than one telco they're "weighted average"
is actually higher than the most expensive of all the telcos they have an
agreement with. eg,
Japan - two telcos - "weighted average" of an Australian call is 25%
higher than the most expensive of the two telcos, and 32% higher than
the un-weighted average between the two telcos.
How can a weighted average be higher than any single value you're
averaging?
They've also pushed the price of SMS up to 75c flat - considerably more
than any single country was previously.
Telstra's already expensive IR becomes even more over-priced.
The horrible data charges of 50c + 1.5c/kB stay the same though. I'm
surprised they didn't "simplify" that by determing it's "average" to be
$1 + 3c/kB?
PD
--
Paul Day
Telstra hikes intl. roaming prices 
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