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Lower International Roaming Costs with LYNX Network Services.

Most companies believe that their roaming costs are too small to warrant attention. An executive traveling overseas on a one-week trip can easily generate a mobile roaming bill in the range of $500 - $1,000 and more. If the trip is two-weeks in duration to developing countries, the cost can be far higher. These bills can go unnoticed by corporate IT or Finance departments because they are usually paid via the employee's expense account or by the local business unit or branch office.

Roaming calls made by an employee in a foreign country cost from $.75 to $4.00 or more per minute. Roaming calls within the visited country are often as expensive as calls back to the United States.

Employees traveling internationally often makes several calls a day back to the United States to pick up mobile phone and/or office voice messages, to speak with associates and family, to arrange changes in transportation reservations or appointments, or to reach customers or executives at visited companies. Individual calls are rarely under $10 and often are more than $50.

Recently, there has been a great deal of publicity relating to regulatory pressure placed on the European carriers to decrease their roaming charges. In response, EU carriers have lowered their roaming charges. BUT, these decreases have applied only to EU mobile customers. Carriers have actually raised roaming rates for other mobile customers to make up for their loss of revenue.

Companies with even a small percentage of employees that travel overseas are often surprised to find that total cost for roaming can be as much as 15% - 20% of the total monthly cost for mobile services.  A number of different solutions are available to reduce the cost of roaming. There are trade-offs for each option involving ease of use, type of technology and resulting savings.

Options for reducing roaming charges can yield savings of 20% to 90%. However, some easy solutions require that traveling executives input a 7 - 13 digit phone number, a 6 - 10 digit pin and the phone number they are calling. Often, the procedure has to be repeated one or more times to achieve a ring at the called number. Other clunky solutions involve traveling with a set of SIM cards with one for each country.

Company executives will often reject these kinds of cumbersome solutions to an expensive problem. LYNX can recommend far easier legal solutions that can yield surprising results.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

• Establish the current cost and metrics for international mobile roaming for employees
• Establish and evaluate solutions for significant reduction of the cost for international roaming
• Prepare and deliver an action plan to your IT management for implementation of one or more selected solutions

METHODOLOGY

To achieve these goals and objectives, the following goals and taskes must be completed:

• Review existing carrier contracts and agreement for current international roaming terms and basis for roaming charges.
• Review current carrier bills to establish the metrics for international roaming.
• Prepare a briefing for your company management setting out alternatives for decreasing roaming costs. The briefing should include a description, advantages and disadvantages for each alternative including approximate cost savings.
• Prepare and submit to your management, a preliminary description of how each of the selected methods could be implemented for use in your organization.

TAKE THE FIRST STEP

Contact Paul Lewis at LYNX and request a detailed proposal for the preparation of an  Action Plan To Cut International Roaming Costs for your company.