Mobile workforce and roaming costs in Europe
Monday, July 25th, 2011 Chris Witeck, Director Product MarketingI just had a chance to come back from a great visit to the UK, talking with some of our European customers as well as talking to some of the European press and analysts.
This visit allowed me to ask some questions and get some insight on the impact of data roaming in Europe- especially in light of the EU legislation in this area, and also to get some real world examples of how organizations are working with personal smartphones and tablets being brought into the organizations.
The hot topic with the press and analysts (other than Rupert Murdoch) is the EU legislation regarding roaming tariffs/controls. What would the impact be for European companies when it comes to roaming costs? I think most are taking a wait and see approach, but the early consensus was that this won’t do much to impact roaming bill shock in the short term as the caps will phase in over a number of years.
One concern raised several times is that carriers won’t just let this revenue go away, and may make up for any losses by pushing up roaming rates for EU travelers to leave the EU, or for non-EU travelers coming in to the EU. In short, still potential for complexity and bill shock – although it may make things simpler for inter-European travel. Still a strong need for good user notifications and good controls for data roaming (both domestic and roaming), which is something that iPass is really investing in.
We talked to a couple of large pan-European customers, and both were fully embracing employees selecting their own smartphone or tablet. However, they are offering to fund the mobility costs on the personal device when it is used for business purposes.
The bring-your-own-device trend is definitely a global phenomenon, but I’ve seen many organizations offer different approaches when it comes to who pays for the data access on those devices, varying from the employee pays for everything, to the employee is compensated partially, to the employer pays for access.
Our view (and our Mobile Workforce Report backs this up) is that the more the user has to pay for access, the less likely they will use the device for work-related purposes. It was good to talk to these customers and hear their approach- they will fund data access for personal devices, but at the same time they expect that employees make sensible choices with that access (meaning avoid data roaming when possible, when using a paid access point, limit personal usage- save the personal usage for when the company is not paying for access).
This is another area that iPass is investing in; providing smartphone and tablet users with usage information that will help them make informed decisions on when to use Wi-Fi vs. mobile broadband, and which applications are consuming the most data.
What devices were our European customers seeing?
When it comes to IT-managed devices, still no change there – Windows is the dominant platform (but with a wider acceptance of Mac for certain job functions). With personal smartphones and tablets, I expected to hear that iOS (iPhones, iPads) was what everyone was choosing.
Yes, iOS is popular, but I was equally surprised to hear that many of the devices being selected by employees were Android devices. You may argue that is not surprising given the Android sales numbers, but often times in the Enterprise we don’t hear that much about Android, so from that perspective, it was interesting to hear.
The other platform that was mentioned many times by both customers and the press/analysts was Windows Phone 7, with the expectation that when Nokia rolls out their first Windows Phone that there will be immediate adoption across Europe.
Are you seeing the same thing if you are in a European country?
Tags: Android, enterprise mobility, Europe, iOS, Windows, Windows Phone 7
