Ordinary Gweilo

One of the biggest sources of revenue for mobile phone operators is international roaming. Amazingly, the Hong Kong government now seems to be doing its best to help the phone companies at the expense of consumers.

Phone companies try to make it as easy as possible for the customer to use their phone overseas (which is fine) but the end-result is that some people find they have huge bills when they come home. Part of the problem is that in Hong Kong, mobile phone calls are extremely cheap – if you need hundreds of minutes each month you can subscribe to a plan that will offer that for not much more than HK$100. Then if you use your phone abroad, you could spend the same sum for a 10 minute call, and in a week you can easily have a bill of hundreds of dollars.

In the UK and many other countries, the catch is that you don’t pay for incoming calls – except when you are overseas. So it is easy to believe that the person making the call is paying (which they are, but not for the international portion). So you are unwittingly paying for the call, and at a much higher rate than you would pay for making a call at home. Some people have received mobile phone bills that were higher than the cost of their holiday!

When I was working for a multinational company with staff travelling around the region, I was horrified by the bills that some people accumulated. Some vistors to Hong Kong even took part in lengthy calls on their mobiles whilst they were sitting in the office (sometimes from people in Hong Kong), which struck me as ridiculous. Sure, it’s convenient, but you’re paying a lot of money for that convenience.

Of course, the high cost of these calls fits in neatly with the way that hotels charge a lot for making IDD calls, making the charges appear reasonable – and it can actually be cheaper to use your mobile – but that doesn’t make it any better. Fortunately there are alternatives.

One possible solution to this problem is to subscribe to a call forwarding service and purchase a local pre-paid SIM card in the country you visit. You can divert all your calls to the overseas number, and although you pay for this service, it is significantly cheaper than roaming (roughly one-quarter of the price, I think). You can also make outgoing calls (including IDD) more cheaply than roaming. The only limitation is that SMS messages are not diverted.

Now, however, the Hong Kong government has introduced a surcharge of 15.86 cents per minute on these services to compensate the mobile phone operators for this loss of business! This only adds about 5-10% to the cost, but why on earth is the government doing this? It’s good news that the mobile phone companies have noticed the loss of business, but surely they should be reducing their charges, not asking the government to help.

The other interesting aspect is the competition between Hong Kong operators to persuade visitors to use their network. I’m not sure whether it is still available, but CSL were at one time offering a special rate of HK$1 per minute for anyone using their network, and handing out promotional material on the Airport Express. Apparently this form of competition is OK, but other companies getting in on the act sends them crying to the government – and unfortunately they listened and did something, rather than politely telling them to go away!