Mobile customers living in the border region can pay up to £300 a year in accidental roaming charges

From Journal.ie

THE NORTHERN IRELAND Assembly’s committee on communications has agreed to contact its Oireachtas counterpart to investigate whether roaming can be abolished within the island of Ireland.

The Assembly committee will look to work with the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications and Transport to investigate whether coordinated legal moves can be brought about to abolish the charges within Ireland.

The contact comes on foot of a report by British telecoms regulator Ofcom, which found that Northern Irish mobile customers living in the border region can pay up to £300 a year in accidental roaming charges.

“It is unacceptable that companies such as O2, Vodafone and 3, which operate across the island of Ireland, continue to impose unacceptable roaming charges on unsuspecting consumers,” said Sinn Féin MLA Phil Flanagan, the committee’s deputy chairman, who added:

These excess premiums imposed by the same parent company is pure and simple profiteering as there is no additional operating costs incurred by the companies.

It is likely that any action in the short-term would focus on the four network operators in Ireland – Vodafone, O2, Meteor and Three – and seek to prohibit those companies from levying roaming charges when customers travel into Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Assembly does not have power in the field of telecommunications – with competence in that area being reserved by Westminster – so any attempt to block UK networks from levying roaming charges within the Republic would be a matter for the government in London.

Flanagan said any co-operation between the Assembly and Oireachtas committees would “exert greater pressure on the operators to remove all roaming charges, deliver a fair deal to consumers in Ireland and improve coverage in rural and border areas”.

“It is time that the operators stopped ripping consumers off,” he said.

Separate rules being pursued by the European Commission will mean that from next year, mobile customers will be able to change their domestic mobile provider for the purposes of roaming – effectively allowing them to take out separate mobile subscriptions for domestic and foreign services.

Rules already in place limit the price of a voice call to 29c per minute while on roaming, with text messages costing a maximum of 9c each.

Last summer, for the first time, the EU also brought in a limit on prices for data downloads while abroad – with a cap of 70c per megabyte of data downloaded.

Members of IC and CMI in Northern Ireland are reminded about a recent email from Ann Francke, CMI Chief Executive and John Morgan, Chair of the CMI Forum Chairs’ Committee inviting members to to express an interest in becoming members of the new CMI Regional Boards.

CMI is about to enter an exciting new phase in its development through the launch of a strategy focussed specifically on growth. This strategy supports our mission of increasing the number and standard of professionally qualified managers and promoting the art and science of good management and leadership.

These Boards will have responsibility for supporting the development and execution of the overarching strategies of CMI, Institute of Consulting (IC) and Women in Management (WiM) at a regional level including delivery of member, employer and learning centre engagement activity. There are also plans to broaden these to include special interest networks based on topics and sectors as well as activities such as mentoring in order to be more relevant and reflective of CMI's diverse communities.

The deadline to express your interest in the position of the local Board member is on the 17^th January 2013 and we are keen to ensure that as many members as possible are given an opportunity to support CMI’s growth in Northern Ireland.

The first stage in this process will be the appointment of the Chair Northern Ireland Board who will then work with the Northern Ireland Forum and CMI Support Team, to facilitate the election of the Northern Ireland Board Members. Activity in Northern Ireland and its network of Branches will continue as normal up until 1st October 2013, at which point the new Regional Board will be in place and begin the process of developing Networks based on geography, i.e. reflecting current Branch groupings and potential growth throughout the whole of Ireland; but they may also group together members by function, sector and/or specialist interest.

Full details of how to register your interest as a Member of the Board, including background information, can be found at: www.managers.org.uk/engageforthefuture.

We hope you will join with us in moving CMI forward and welcome your interest.

Should you have any comments or questions please contact CMI via email to memberengagement@managers.org.uk

When grey hairs matter.....

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