The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Ministers have called for a review of all the prices applied to International Mobile Roaming (IMR) services in the region. A price cap was introduced at the retail and wholesale level on voice calls made within the visited country (local calls), and on calls made to other GCC member states (international calls), including the home country. This price regulation took full effect as of February 1, 2012.
With this objective, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Roaming Working Group has launched today a public consultation which aims to review other IMR services (including data, SMS, MMS and video calls) to determine whether further regulation is needed.
The consultation document includes :
1. An analysis (to the extent possible) of the provision of roaming services in the GCC region to identify any areas where amendments to the Regulation, or public policy interventions beyond the Regulation, may be required;
2. A set of options, consistent with international best practice, to address any problems identified;
3. An Identification of the most appropriate option(s) for successful implementation;
4. An assessment of the possibility to use a per-second charging mechanism for both retail and wholesale roaming charges for all voice calls, and
5. An assessment of the possibility to use a unified per kilobyte (KB) or per megabyte (MB) charging mechanism for both retail and wholesale roaming data.
All stakeholders in Qatar are requested to respond to this consultation. Responses should be sent to raconsultations@ict.gov.qa by or before November 6, 2014.
The consultation document is available at this link.