Controlling International Wireless

What’s the first thing you do after being on the plane for a transcontinental flight overseas? Most likely you reach for your mobile phone, switch it on and see the ever familiar icon on the screen that tells you that while you were jetting across the Atlantic the world beneath you went on with its business. You switch on your Blackberry and in a flash it starts to vibrate intolerably as it receives all the e-mails that were on the BES server raring to be sent.

You think to yourself, “How much easier does it get?” There you are on foreign soil and all you have to do is reach for that mobile phone and connect to the world. You are able to instantly reply to e-mails from associates, supervisors, and clients with your Blackberry and not have to waste precious time getting your laptop all fired up.

As you go about your business of placing and receiving calls and receiving and answering e-mails, the last thing on your mind is, “How much is all this costing the business?”

Domestic spending on mobility can be, for the most part, predictable as it is generally covered by your company’s pooling and rate plans. In enterprise pooling plans, enough buffers are usually built in to cover some of the heavier users of mobile devices to avoid overages. Typically, mobility contracts offer generous amounts of peak minutes, free mobile-to-mobile calling, free long distance, and unlimited calling off-peak. However, when it comes to mobile international direct distance dialing (IDDD) and international roaming (IR) a majority, if not all, of carrier contracts do not carry provisions that govern the use and establish discounted rates for these calls. That is not by design.