International Internet Roaming

Abstract

We study mobile data providers' pricing strategies and incentives to enter voluntary reciprocal international data roaming agreements. We show that roaming fees and retail prices charged to mobile data users at home and abroad vary under asymmetries in the domestic competition of providing roaming access and providers' relative bargaining power. A mutual moderation effect prevails only for symmetric degrees of competition across countries while international integration inflates roaming fees and leads to incentives to foreclose non-integrated providers in more competitive markets. Finally we discuss implications proposing novel ways for antitrust policy to combat against inflated international data retail roaming prices.Keywords: international reciprocal data roaming agreements data roaming fees symmetric and asymmetric domestic competition international integration foreclosure refusal to supply bargaining antitrust versus regulation.JEL codes: C7 F2 F5 L22 L42 L86 L96