Unaffordable Roaming

[Commentary] In a plugged-in, hyperglobalized world, one might expect that our communications networks would allow us to roam widely, cellphones and tablets connected to the matrix, no matter the location. But when it comes to telecommunications pricing, globalization stopped at the border.

A new survey found that international data roaming among the industrialized countries (members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) costs, on average, $6 to $10 per megabyte — about the amount needed to e-mail a few low-resolution snapshots. Talking isn't much cheaper. A similar study two years ago reported that the average price of a three-minute local call in an O.E.C.D. country while roaming internationally was $6.76. These exorbitant prices have little to do with the cost of moving a byte or a sentence over telecom networks, which has fallen sharply in recent years. Rather, the OECD suggests it reflects a lack of competition among wireless carriers offering cross-border roaming services. This has likely been compounded in the United States by a lack of regulation of the interconnection fees that telecom operators charge each other to let data flow across their networks.