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Note that the telcos don't stop charging each other for roaming, they just stop charging customers. This might even be good news for Spanish and Italian telcos.
by lorenzhs 9y ago
Note that the telcos don't stop charging each other for roaming, they just stop charging customers. This might even be good news for Spanish and Italian telcos.
- konschubert 9y agoActually, in the article the journalist argues that it IS good news for them.
- kalleboo 9y agoTrue, but the regulation limits how much they can charge each other so they need to make it up in volume. Before they could charge 51.2 EUR/GB which is now lowered to 7.7 EUR/GB set to go down in steps to 2.5 EUR/GB by 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulations#Prices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulat...
- my123 9y ago51 euros per gigabyte is absurd.
- kalleboo 9y agoThey used to be charging multiple euros per MEGABYTE. You can see why regulation was needed.
- catdog 9y ago7.7 EUR/GB is still absurd, it's 2017.
- amelius 9y agoThat's 77 euro for 10GB. For that money you can buy a 1TB harddrive, send it by mail, and it will be faster still.
- seuss1969 9y agoYou think €51 per GB is absurd? I have a Vodafone prepaid connection from Germany. Currently traveling in Switzerland, Vodafone informed me my roaming data charges are 17ct per 50 Kb. A little back of the envelope calculation and that puts my rate at €3.500 per GB. Now that's an absurd value!!
- krrrh 9y agoI'm curious if that was postpaid. My prepaid Vodafone data started working EU-wide without extra charges just over a year ago. > Gut zu wissen: Du nutzt Deine Highspeed-MB mit Deinem CallYa-Tarif ohne Aufpreis in der ganzen EU. Falls Du den Basispreis oder Deine Tarif-Option nicht zahlst, kostet ein MB 5,95 Cent.
- efdee 9y agoI think when I (a European) visit the US, my roaming cost is about 15 euro per MB. You read that right, MB. Not GB.
- Fnoord 9y agoIt is. In 2008 I downloaded 30 MB Firefox nightly on a ThinkPad whilst roaming in Serbia. Bad move. Set me back ~600 EUR. I didn't know this beforehand, but I was 'lucky' to struck a deal with Vodafone to cut the cost in half. Serbia isn't in EU though, and this was in 2008.
- jpalomaki 9y ago7.7 EUR per gigabyte is still a ridiculous price. I simply refuse to believe that this is even close to the actual costs. This is very problematic, since in some countries operators are selling fix price 4G subscriptions with no data cap for prices like 20-50EUR/month. Now they are supposed to let us roam free, but still pay the outrageous per gigabyte fees to other operators. This benefits large, multinational operators which sell data capped subscriptions. Small, local and competitive get hurt.
- lorenzhs 9y agoYes that's why they can set limits on unlimited plans and start charging "reasonably" after those limits are exceeded.
- fulafel 9y ago8 E/GB is 3+ orders of magnitude more than the bandwidth cost for a telco.
- lorenzhs 9y agoRight, but that's backbone traffic cost. The majority of total cost is going to be the wireless part of your data's journey. Interpolating from intranational data cost, 8€/GB is still a lot but maybe off by one order of magnitude, not three
- wklauss 9y agoBut the rate they can charge to each other is capped, I think. I should have not said "no extra revenue" in any case, that is true. My mistake.
- BerislavLopac 9y agoI have learned a while ago that, while telcos are technically charging each other for cross-network traffic, no real money ever exchange hands. In practice, two telcos issue invoices to each other, the amounts cancel out and anything that remains is just transferred as the starting point to the next accounting period.
- zulln 9y agoEven if true for most, it most likely is not true for every operator.
- tajen 9y agoSo those abusive prices per-MB only apply to... small operators who don't have international presence?
- fludlight 9y agoSounds like an opportunity for a very small telco to build towers in touristy/CBD/expat areas and charge foreign carriers for traffic.