Call For Roaming Solution in Northern Ireland
The Northern Ireland political party, the SDLP is calling for an all-Ireland tariff system to avoid what they call "excessive" roaming charges between Northern Ireland and Ireland. SDLP Trade and Enterprise Spokesperson Sean Farren said: "I welcome the work being done by Minister Noel Dempsey and his counterpart Angela Smith on this problem. They are talking to the phone companies and they have asked the telecoms regulators north and south to propose solutions by the end of March.
"The phone companies are basically offering technical solutions, but these can only solve one part of the problem, what they call inadvertent roaming. This is where you make a call from a northern mobile, but the call is routed through the closest cell mast, which happens in the south. The result is that you have made an international call and are charged accordingly.
"The companies are promising to pinpoint the border more accurately, which would reduce but not eliminate inadvertent roaming. But this is only half the problem: people living along the border need to make calls across it all the time and they should not be charged the sky for doing it. Tens of thousands of people cross the border to work every day, our economies north and south need them, and the phone companies should not be putting barriers in their way.
"The SDLP is asking the regulators and the two governments to focus on tariff solutions in the form of a single charge for calls between phones on the island of Ireland covering both pre-subscription and pay-as-you-go phones. We will also be meeting the British and Irish phone companies in the next few weeks to press for a solution which is meaningful for people in border areas."
Posted to the site on 16th January 2006
