When Google announced its new mobile offering in March, the company promised to drive innovations in the network provider market. It seems the first innovation could be to get rid of international roaming charges.
Google is reportedly in talks with Hutchison Whampoa about a deal that will allow U.S. customers make calls from abroad for the same cost as if they were on American soil.
Industry sources told The Telegraph of the deal between Google and the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, owner of the UK's Three Mobile, as well as operators in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Ireland. Hutchison Whampoa also is in talks to purchase O2's network in the U.K.
The deal aims to create a global network where calls, text messages and data will all cost the same no matter where the user is located. Hutchison is a natural partner for Google as it has already abolished roaming charges for Three Mobile customers in many countries.
Reducing roaming fees has been a big selling point for European carriers over the past few years and European Commission politicians are trying to abolish the charges altogether by creating a unified telecommunications market. However, cheap roaming hasn't been as big a selling point for U.S. carriers to date. T-Mobile offers one contract which has no international fees for data and texts but not calls, whereas all the other providers prefer to concentrate on add-on packages for making cheap international calls from the U.S. rather than offer any deals for traveling customers.
Google announced its new mobile offering at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona in March. Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of products for Google, announced that the search company would partner with existing U.S. providers to offer deals for Nexus users. "Our goal is to drive a set of innovations we think should arrive, but do it on a smaller scale, like Nexus devices, so people will see what we're doing," he said.
Neither Google or Hutchison have confirmed the deal and though earlier reports suggested a Google network would be available by the end of March, users are still awaiting the service which is due "in the coming months."
