The GSMA wasn’t on hand to talk to me yesterday about the EC roaming announcement. Probably too busy sticking pins in dolls of Neelie Kroes.

But they did provide this written statement:, which is essentially a holding “wait and see” type of thing, although it is clearly unhappy at the proposed retail price caps on mobile data.

Still, as the GSMA is the voice of the mobile operators at large, and since roaming legislation is threatening a key profit stream for operators, we should give it some air time.

GSMA statement:
Now that we have the European Commission’s final proposals we look forward to examining them and to engaging with all stakeholders on this issue over the coming months. We share the Commission’s belief that competition, not price caps, must be the right long term solution.

The mobile industry will continue to invest and innovate to help deliver the EU’s Digital Agenda. Supportive EU policies and regulations can enable this. It is vital that we find the right balance to ensure the necessary investments in future networks that will be needed to cater for the explosion of mobile data traffic.

And while we’re on written statements, we had this note from Ovum’s PR company, attributed to Ovum lead analyst Matthew Howett. Howett would agree that price caps can be inefficient, but he thinks a more structural attempt “has the potential” to work. Anyway, as I’m in copy and paste mode here, you might as well read the whole comment for yourself.

Matthew Howett
The current regulation has been a success story for voice, but not so for data. Since 2007 the average cost of making a call has fallen by almost 75% which is very unlikely to have happened in the absence of regulatory intervention. Prices for data have not fallen by as much as the European Commission hoped and is why they are now extending the regulation to include a retail price cap for data.

Price caps are generally an ineffective means to regulate. Evidence so far suggests that operators have gravitated towards the price caps but not offered prices below these. With this in mind the EC is calling the retail price cap on data ‘a safety net’ and is hopeful that a structural solution will address the issue.

A more structural remedy has the potential to work, but must be easy to understand and cheap to implement. What’s on the table attempts to structurally deal with the underlying problem – a lack of competition. We are currently reliant on how well our home network operator has negotiated with partners in the countries we visit. Splitting out this component from our tariffs allows the emergence of new and innovative players who are likely to compete on price.

We are unlikely to see similar strict regulatory intervention elsewhere in the world because it requires a legal basis such as the EU. Instead, we are much more likely to see bilateral agreements reached between countries with a commonality. Already examples are appearing in Asia e.g. between Australia and New Zealand.

The approval required from Council and Parliament is very likely. The cost of using your phone abroad is very close to the key decision makers and is politically an attractive initiative to get behind. We are unlikely to see any barriers to its progress through the legislative process. Operators have tried to legally challenge the current regulation and failed. It’s not clear whether they will try again, but given the competitive potential of the new structural solution are more likely to focus their efforts on attracting new customers who roam.

This just in: Juniper Research has determined that the total value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC transactions will reach $670bn by 2015, up from $240bn this year.

Juniper’s new Mobile Payment Strategies report says that this growth will be driven by the rapid adoption of mobile ticketing, NFC contactless payments, physical goods purchases and money transfers as people in both developed and developing countries use their devices for everyday transactions.

Some 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months, resulting in transactions approaching $50 billion worldwide by 2014. Meanwhile the need for financial access in developing countries is such that active mobile money users will double by 2013 and drive transaction values accordingly.  

Senior analyst David Snow explained: “Our analysis shows that emerging segments such as physical goods payments, NFC and money transfers will fuel market growth by a factor of 2.7 times by 2015. Digital goods is the largest segment and, although forecast to more than double, it is not growing as quickly as some of the newer segments.”

This time a year ago, Juniper was forecasting that the value of digital and physical goods that people buy with their mobiles would reach $200bn globally by 2012. Now it is stating that that market will reach $240 billion by the end of 2011 – although the latter figure includes money transfers, which the previous forecast did not.

A couple of weeks ago, Juniper stated that it thinks contactless transactions will reach $50 billion by 2014, a number it repeats in this overall payments forecast, no doubt driven by the fact that it also thinks 1 in 5 users will have registered for mobile money services by 2013.

Other key messages from the most recent report include:
•    The top 3 regions for mobile payments (Far East & China, W. Europe and N. America) will represent 75% of the global mobile payment gross transaction value by 2015.
•    Digital goods payments will account for nearly 40% of the market in 2015.
The study provides the big picture of mobile payments, providing forecasts of the main market segments of digital and physical goods purchases, contactless NFC and domestic and international money transfers and remittances, providing regional forecasts of gross transaction values.