Tariff Consultancy Ltd launches new product Middle-East Mobile Benchmark

The Middle-East Mobile Benchmark service offers an insight into pricing for postpaid and prepaid services both voice and mobile broadband. The service comprises of a database providing detailed pricing information of services namely mobile broadband and mobile voice services including domestic usage, international usage and roaming. Additionally, this report provides a comparison of the various services in an easy-to-use format.

Some of the highlights from the findings are:
The Benchmark has found that some Middle-Eastern operators offer a significantly greater number of tariffs than others such as in Jordan where Zain offers 29 postpaid and 7 prepaid tariffs aimed its consumers. Total Plans offered by the 26 operators covered, a total of 174 postpaid plans and 96 prepaid plans are available: 14 out of the 26 operators offer more postpaid than prepaid plans.

The Benchmark compares three plans for each operator, namely lowest priced, medium priced and highest priced in terms of rental charge charged per month. Rental charges vary from as little as $0.52 to as high as $680.83. The average rental per month of all plans is $48.70 per month.

The Benchmark finds that a total of 6 out of the 26 covered operators offer voice unlimited minutes and in their allowance while 18 operators provide 1 GB or more of data allowance each month.

Out of all the plans selected in the 13 countries both post and prepaid, the per minute charge for a voice call is no more than $0.15. The average cost of a 1 minute domestic on-net voice call is $0.08, $0.09 to landlines and $0.09 to other networks.

Domestic SMS prices vary from $0.01 to $0.09 per text and MMS from $0.03 to $0.27 per 1 MMS.

The survey found that some operators levy lower international calling to the USA than to a neighbouring country. The average call rate to the USA is $0.51 compared to Saudi Arabia at $0.50 per minute.

Roaming charges attract an average of $2.32 per minute when calling back home from the roaming destination USA. Calling locally typically attracts a lower rate with rates being well below the $1 per minute charge. Data roaming varies across the surveyed operators from as little as $0.53 per 1 Mbyte to as high as $29.74 per 1 Mbyte.