People on average were willing to pay a lot for roaming, because it was charged from: - business travelers (someone else's money) - high income people (will s

People on average were willing to pay a lot for roaming, because it was charged from: - business travelers (someone else's money) - high income people (will still roaming even if it's expensive) And it had a loophole for frugal people (prepaid local SIM) so they could still tolerate the situation. Finally, operators didn't decide the roaming costs for their customers - they could only decide what they will charge the other country's operator. So there was no direct way to lower their own roaming costs short of formin a "reverse cartel" of lowering prices.