While prices for other mobile services have decreased over time, international mobile roaming
rates have remained relatively high in the APEC region. These rates are additionally inconsistent
both within and across economies. Although international roaming services for voice and SMS
are far from competitively priced, the cost of international data roaming per megabyte (MB) is especially high and subject to wide variation. As detailed in the survey conducted by Australia
following the APEC TEL38 meeting, the widest variation was reported by Hong Kong, where
data roaming per MB costs ranged from US$1.30 to US$43.00 according to the figures reported
in 2008.32 While US$1.30/MB may not appear especially costly, the average data roaming cost
for all surveyed economies was approximately US$15.00/MB. Given the amount of data flow
required to undertake commonplace activities on a mobile device , as illustrated in Table 4,
these data roaming costs can quickly add up for a user. Since professionals on travel are
increasingly relying on their mobile devices to conduct business and even facilitate their travel
when abroad, such high and variable data roaming costs pose a serious impediment to supply
chain performance.