Ouch - The Cost of Roaming

                              $693/Trip Roaming Charge

Vinnie at Deal Architect loves to chide service providers/systems integrators and outsourcers for their high SG&A costs. Likewise, Jason at Spend Matters is all about helping companies get a better grip on their expenses. When I saw this piece in the March 2008 issue of Communication News, I just about fell out of my chair.

The story reports on a Harris Interactive study that found businesses paying $693 per trip per business traveler for overseas cellular roaming. Worse, 61% of responding firms indicated that they had no plans to switch their overseas providers to reduce this cost.

If my employees submitted a bill like these, they'd be unemployed. Far lower cost options are available and should be used. Since almost any office or hotel they stay at will have internet access, Skype is clearly a lower cost option. Second, local SIM cards can be acquired for those essential calls that must be made locally. But, any employee that plans to use his/her cell phone overseas needs to do some homework in advance of the trip. Some carriers in the US will not allow calls to originate overseas. Some phones promise GSM compatibility but those claims are often in error. Some networks, I've discovered, don't work with anything we could pre-purchase in the United States.

Still, I've managed to survive just fine overseas without incurring bills of anything like those mentioned in this article. This is coming from a fellow who has logged as many as 48 international round-trips in a single year.

This looks like a ripe opportunity for sourcing pros to get involved.