Ordinary Gweilo

Saturday’s SCMP had a short news story quoting Chief Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen as saying that he would like “to see no more roaming charges when people travel between Hong Kong and Guangdong.”  Well, wouldn’t we all?  However, it’s probably not going to happen:

An industry source reacted strongly to Mr Tang’s suggestion, saying: “Telecom is a competitive market. The government should not intervene in how the private sector does its business; it will set a dangerous precedent.

“Roaming involves costs: that is why there are roaming charges. Let the market set the prices.”

I think the reporter may have slightly mis-heard, because what the spokesman actually said was “roaming involves high profits and we want to keep hold of them for as long as we can”.   Costs?  What costs?

In Europe mobile phone companies are being forced to reduce roaming charges on the basis that the European Union is supposed to be a single market, and to that end they have already abolished border controls between most of the member countries (excluding the UK).  Meanwhile, although Hong Kong is part of China we still have a border crossing (well, two actually) – and different phone companies.  

The thing with roaming is that it’s easy enough to avoid paying the excessive charges, but it’s a bit fiddly (two phones, or one phone which takes two SIM cards, helps here), and if you don’t expect everyone to remember two numbers you need to subscribe to a separate service to re-direct calls (which is cheaper than roaming but more expensive than local calls).  Or there is at least one mobile phone company offering a dual SIM card, and I’m sure there are other solutions I’ve never heard about.

So basically the only people paying roaming charges are those who either don’t know the alternatives or can’t be bothered with them.  And presumably there are enough of them to make it a profitable business for phone companies on both sides of the border.