ROAMING – On-Device Optimization Beats Surcharges, Fair Use Policies, or Not Offering at All

 In Blogs & Bloggers

By Anthony Floyd, MOBOLIZE | Director of Strategic Partnerships

Yes, believe it or not, surcharges, fair use policies or not offering roaming at all were some of the suggestions from Tier 1 Mobile Operators and MVNO’s in Europe responding to the keynote panel session “Offsetting the RLAH’s impact” at the MVNO Europe Conference held in London this week.

Session after session we heard the same stories. Roaming data has increased massively in the last year driven almost entirely by video, 3X, 5X and even 10X in one case.

Again, the big operators with a broad footprint in multiple countries, were largely nonplussed by the impact as they will resort to doing what they’ve always done which is to net off. One does question though how balanced is balanced and how even they must be seeing the impact on their networks.

For the rest of the operators, who see a huge summer exodus of outbound roaming, netting off provides no comfort. They are just watching as their wholesale roaming bill increases exponentially as their customers are increasingly catching up on videos, box-sets and other online video goodies whilst out of the country thanks to the EU’s Roam Like at Home (RLAH) legislation.

The roaming data genie is out of the bottle thanks to RLAH and the insatiable appetite for video consumption shows no sign of abating.

Sadly, worst off are all are the MVNO’s who not only can’t offset and are also at the beholden of their partner MNO for any roaming fees.

No wonder then that some were suggesting of applying to the EU for exemption grants, surcharging their customers or not offering roaming at all and just being a domestic offering only.

Refreshingly though, there was a glimmer of realisation that there are technological solutions to this roaming data challenge. Michael Hunt from MTC Consulting was the first to point the keynote audience to technology at the forefront of the industry addressing this challenge when he called out Mobolize and our on-device data optimization solution in his panel discussion.

It’s also clearly a key topic of thought for the main operators as Matt Jones Head of Data from Telia Carrier took to the stage and impressed on the conference that reducing video file size from 1080 to 480 has no tangible impact to a viewer’s enjoyment on a 5-inch mobile device.

We couldn’t agree more, and this is precisely why we are looking to deploy our device-based software with operators to do exactly that. Afterall an 80% reduction in roaming data is clearly going to make a considerable difference to your wholesale cost base.

That’s right, up to 80%. Mobolize Optimize technology can pace all adaptive bit rate video data from the end user’s device resulting in considerable data reduction without impacting their enjoyment.

It’s probably even better still when there’s no network integration, capex, or equipment required. Just a nice feature addition within your existing care or reward app.

That makes optimization simple.

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