11 ms·

Europe drafts law to ban mobile roaming charges

239 points by Libertatea 13y ago

zrgiu_ 13y ago
This is one of the things the EU is really good at: making people-centric decisions, instead of corporation-helping choices. This roaming-charges change has actually been a long time coming, with forced decreases in tariffs for a while now, so it shouldn't surprise anyone. I just wish some similar agreement can be reached (in time) with countries outside the EU.
- CaptainZapp 13y ago
  > I just wish some similar agreement can be reached (in time) with countries outside the EU. Intercontinental roaming charges are a bad joke (3$ incoming, 5$ out and yes, that's per minute) . What I do is to get a local SIM and communicate the number to those contacts that need it. Internet (sometimes 20$ per MB and yes, you read that right) is less of a problem due the ubiquity of free WLANs. Another really excellent thing the EU did is to mandate mini USB as phone chargers. With the noticeable exception of Apple every newer phone can be charged with any newer charger. This used to be a major pet peevee of mine.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    > sometimes 20$ per MB and yes, you read that right I can confirm, just checked my data roaming rate (from the EU), it's 0.15€/MB for European (not just EU, also Switzerland, Norway or Iceland) roaming (which is already crazy expensive, my in-country plan is 0.0075€/MB even ignoring that it also provides voice and SMS); 0.30€/MB from the US and 13.00€/MB from just about everywhere else
  - zrgiu_ 13y ago
    I don't know if this still the case, but a while ago i bought an iPhone from UK (after the mini USB mandate), and it came with an adapter to miniUSB in the box. Even Apple had to abide to the new regulation. As for the roaming charges, I completely agree. Even now, within Europe, it's really bad for data. I've traveled through 10 EU countries in the last 3 months, and had to buy 7 SIM cards, as my home carrier charges 2EUR for 5MB. I was lucky with my 3LikeHome sim card from Austria, which you can use with your home rates in a few other countries.
    - masklinn 13y ago
      > it came with an adapter to miniUSB in the box Yeah but that's an adapter, even though it does abide by the rules you still have to carry the adapter around. Most manufacturers just switched to miniUSB entirely, so you don't need an adapter, any combination of charger and phone should work (in practice there may be issues with undervoltage, I've seen combinations of phones and chargers not work)
      - desas 13y ago
        There's not even rules, the EU just asked them to sort it out, otherwise it would legislate so they had have a common standard.
        celticninja 13y ago
        even better
    - cja 13y ago
      Heyah (Poland) have a 25PLN (£5) deal that give you 1.2GB to use anywhere in the EU. Calling and texting prices aren't so good though.
  - cabalamat 13y ago
    > Another really excellent thing the EU did is to mandate mini USB as phone chargers Wasn't it the Chinese who originally mandated that? Either way, it's a good thing.
    - mason240 13y ago
      Google mandated it for all phones with Android, which it when it became the de facto standard.
    - Someone 13y ago
      AFAIK, the EU initiated that. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply (and it is _micro_ USB. Not that much smaller than mini USB, but thinner and better, mechanically. See http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18552/why-was-mini-usb-deprecated-in-favor-of-micro-usb http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18552/why-was...)
  - speleding 13y ago
    micro USB is actually a very poor choice for a charger connection: it is max rated at 2.5W (way too low for an iPhone), it is keyed (you can only plug it in one way) and it is expensive (a whole bunch of pins you don't need). On top of that many people confuse it with mini USB, like you just did.
    - SEMW 13y ago
      My understanding is that, contrary to GP's comment, the EU didn't 'mandate microUSB'. The original MoU required the manufacturers[1] to get together to decide on a common external power supply "to allow for full compatibility and safety of chargers and mobile phones". So while officially CENELEC decided the standard, in practice they were never going to not adopt the manufacturers' recommendation, which was microUSB. As for amount of power, I believe the USB power delivery spec allows 5V devices to draw up to 10W of power (5V at 2A) - though it's fairly new (2012), so I don't know how widely used it is yet. [1] Motorola, LGE, Samsung, RIM, Nokia, SonyEricsson, NEC, Apple, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments
      - speleding 13y ago
        Yes, the EU only mandated that the industry choose a common standard so they picked the cheapest of all the options they had. With the newer spec you can indeed draw more power but it requires hardware negotiation to prevent older devices catching on fire. Some of the other options on the table at the time were much more elegant and extensible to, for example, household appliances (USB is not allowed for use in the bathroom or kitchen). The other options were a few cents per connector more expensive so they never had a chance when the EU decided to leave it to the industry.
    - colechristensen 13y ago
      Micro USB has 4 pins (+/- Data +/- Power, 1 additional pin for host/device determination) Where are the bunches of pins you don't need? And the power ratings are functionally design minimums so your USB device must work within those boundaries, while most phones and phone chargers can exceed them. My kindle charger outputs 5 V 1.8 A for a total of 9 watts. My droid charger outputs 5.1 V 0.75 A for a total of 3.8 watts.
- devx 13y ago
  Hopefully it will stay that way. I think global corporations have started increasing their lobbying in EU rapidly. It may be why the EU Comission usually seems to make the worse decisions, and the opposite of what the EU Parliament wants. If the lobbying extends from the EU Comission to the EU Parliament, that could change.
tluyben2 13y ago
About time. I'm waiting for this for a while. I travel a lot in EU and it's very annoying going around with a bag of sims in my pocket. Kroes does some nice things; hopefully it'll go through.
jcrei 13y ago
This could have the potential to become quite disruptive. If there are no roaming charges, I will be free to select any operator from any EU country and am not stuck with the ones where I reside. This will increase competition, and lower prices (or service levels will increase).
- Jacqued 13y ago
  I don't know about the situation in most of Europe, but I think at least some countries could be severely disrupted by French operators, which seen some very low cost alternatives emerge since the irruption of a 4th operator in early 2012. 2h + SMS only costs 2€/mo, where it used to be 16-25€ only two years ago ; and the full package (unlimited everything, with data bandwith capped after 3GB) 20€ Now if there's a country with even cheaper mobile plans... I'd like to see that
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - solnyshok 13y ago
    Latvia - Tele2, 9eur for unlinited domestic calls/sms+2GB of full speed, after that capped to 64kbps but still unlimited.
  - TsiCClawOfLight 13y ago
    Austria...
- swombat 13y ago
  Not really - no roaming charges doesn't mean it's not more expensive to call people from other countries. So if you have a number in France, but you call mostly UK people, it will still cost you more than if you had a UK number - it just won't cost you more if you're calling them from France than if you're calling them from the UK.
  - notimetorelax 13y ago
    Other option: if you have friends or relatives in the other country, just bring your SIM card with you when you leave. Frankly it's so tiring to live on the border and pay for the roaming just because cell phone decided to be in roaming.
antr 13y ago
I hope this is the tip of the iceberg of better things to come. One of the most disruptive ideas the EU is working on (among alternatives) is detaching the network from the operators. This can considerably reduce network capex, homogenise network technology and allow for a real single EU telecom space. By having operators become clients of a single network users will benefit from increase pan-EU competition, with more competitive and transparent rates. This has been partly done at national levels in similar sectors, specially in the gas and electricity sectors (see National Grid in the UK, Snam Rete Gas & Terna in Italy, etc.). Gas and electricity networks are private but regulated, and third parties have access rights to the network to retail gas & electricity. In this telecom case, operators don't have commodity risk, which makes third-party access to the network infinitely easier. Fingers crossed.
- easytiger 13y ago
  > One of the most disruptive ideas the EU is working on (among alternatives) is detaching the network utilizes operators. Since i was quite young it blew my mind that we didn't have one universal network which every network utilises. It is clearly more efficient, removes redundancy, spreads costs.
  - lrem 13y ago
    It's not that crystal clear. I live in France now, where the last mile cables are detached from operators. As the cable to the place I live in is quite bad, no operator will ever do a thing about it. In Poland, it's still an anarchy... So when I receive bad service, I go to the competition and they put their own cable to my place. They have to compete on that part of quality of service, not just say "it's just bad around here, it's not our problem".
  - mavhc 13y ago
    Networks can never work with capitalism, as there's more benefit to extending an existing network than creating multiple competing networks. Roads, Internet, wired phones. Thus the network might as well be owned and run by the government, and access to it sold to the public/companies.
felxh 13y ago
Long overdue, especially for people living in the smaller EU countries, where driving ~3 hours in any direction will render your smartphone useless (or very expensive). Large carriers, which are complaining the loudest, shouldn't have an issue with this, since they are present in virtually all EU member states.
- masklinn 13y ago
  Of course they have an issue, because they're present in virtually all of the EU it's completely free money for them right now.
  - felxh 13y ago
    exactly my point, but I could have probably been more explicit!
  - easytiger 13y ago
    Three in the UK clearly saw this coming and recently made roaming in several countries completely part of your monthly package
    - mjs 13y ago
      The countries are: Ireland, Australia, Italy, Austria, Hong Kong, Sweden and Denmark. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23896896 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23896896 (This doesn't look to be symmetric, for some reason--if you're a Three customer in one of those countries I don't think you avoid roaming charges in the UK.)
      - crocowhile 13y ago
        Three customers in Italy had the no-extra-charge-when-roaming feature already 4-5 years ago actually. That was both for data and voice. http://www.tre.it/opzioni/estero/all-estero-come-a-casa http://www.tre.it/opzioni/estero/all-estero-come-a-casa EDIT: I see there was a bit of overhead actually. not quite the same tariff.
masklinn 13y ago
> Her proposals have faced fierce opposition from the largest networks, including Vodafone, Orange and Telefónica, which say the end of roaming within Europe could cost them €7bn (£5.9bn). Delicious tears. Though I object to the use of the word "cost", it will remove unmerited earnings but will not add costs to their balance sheet: notice how the operators whining the most are the pan-european ones? That's because they can currently charge roaming fees for operations within their network, fleecing their own users.
- devx 13y ago
  Not to mention this could potentially make them more money if all of the sudden people can just talk to their relatives in other EU countries without having to pay "special fees".
  - pisarzp 13y ago
    I think this is still years ahead of us. Only roaming charges will be cancelled, calling German numbers from UK will still cost you a fortune. What is idiotic, it only makes everyone to install Viver/Skype/whatever and use phone functionality less.
    - kristofferR 13y ago
      Most carriers in Norway has begun to charge the same rate for calls/SMS/data to all the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland) as local usage, so it's not that unrealistic.
    - porsupah 13y ago
      Not necessarily. With UK carrier rate structures as they are, it can often be cheaper to call internationally than within the UK. Consider, for example, GiffGaff (part of O2): within the UK, 10p/min. Meanwhile, calling internationally from the UK: Germany, 5p/min; India, 2p/min; USA, 3p/min.
      - MichaelGG 13y ago
nohuck13 13y ago
Am I the only on that thinks this is a bit of an overreach? Seems to me, good justifications for legislating would be -If customers were being tricked into paying roaming charges in nefarious ways; -If there were serious externalities somehow not being included in the roaming charge transaction -If there were monopolistic / market manipulating behaviour going on. -If the companies were subject to a tragedy-of-the-commons situation where private resolution was not feasible (they're not- the public broadcast spectrum is both rival and excludable in practice). Instead, the state interest according to Kroes is that it's an "irritant." This kind of top-down control seems a bit counter to the hacker/startup ethos. Edit: if you're going to down vote, please can you comment and have a dialogue?
- masklinn 13y ago
  > Am I the only on that thinks this is a bit of an overreach? Not a all. Vodafone, Telefonica and Orange completely agree with you. > Instead, the state interest according to Kroes is that it's an "irritant." The state interest is the people's interest. Roaming charges are not in the user's interest: 1. It's very easy to be hit by roaming charges in Europe if you're not careful, many countries can be gone through in an hour or three and since Schengen moving across borders has become an habitual past-time. 2. The charges are not fair and not about costs these days, they're about free money, notice how the operators which have issues with that are present or have partnerships in pretty much all of the EU? A roaming user doesn't cost them much, but it earns them a lot. 3. Roaming charges are especially problematic with modern "always connected" smartphones, forgetting to disable data roaming (if you can even do so) is common, and the charges for data roaming are completely crazy.
  - rmc 13y ago
    If you live near a border, and the 'foreign' network mast is closer than your 'national' one, and has a stronger signal, you might be 'roaming' while at home.
    - mcv 13y ago
      That should definitely be illegal.
Systemic33 13y ago
As a resident in Denmark, this is awesome news. It really sucks that you've got so many internet connected things, but after 300km MAX, you are on the other side of the border, and you are reduced to feature phone-like capabilities (Thanks Nokia/HERE for offline maps). To people from US; Imagine living on the east coast (with the smaller states) and every time you move outside of your state, you had to use a feature phone.
- maxsilver 13y ago
  We don't have to imagine it -- that is how it is in the US. For example, if you are on T-Mobile USA, living on the east coast, anytime you drive west, after about 100km your "4G" smartphone is reduced to a feature phone (either on T-Mobile's own GRPS/EDGE-only network, or hyper-restricted voice/sms-only roaming on AT&T). This happens even if the other operators have extensive 3G/4G/LTE networks available in those cities.
  - Systemic33 13y ago
    Aren't AT&T, Verizon, etc, nation-wide operators?
    - aestra 13y ago
      Yes, they are. HOWEVER: The USA is HUGE. It's not cost effective to put data where every inch of land is covered, ever slow data (EDGE). There's a ton of sparsely populated land, and rural areas. T-Mobile is a small operator and has the crappiest network coverage. It is 1000x better than it was 4 years ago, as they are adding more coverage, but it is expensive and slow. T-mobile is the worst for data coverage, and voice coverage. I had them for years, and I eventually dropped them for Verizon because I was finding myself without any cellphone service so often, because I travel often, and I find myself in rural areas. If I stayed in the city all the time it would work for me. That means no voice, no SMS, no data. Take a look at T-Mobile's 3G and 4G coverage map (and voice): http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/pcc.aspx/ http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/pcc.aspx/ Verizon: http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/support/coverage-locator http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/support/coverage-locator Sprint: http://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp http://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp AT&T: http://www.att.com/maps/wireless-coverage.html http://www.att.com/maps/wireless-coverage.html The other big issue is we have two standards here. GSM and CDMA. GSM is what T-Mobile and AT&T use, and CDMA is what Verizon and Sprint use. These can't play nice-nice with each other. Plus AT&T's 3G was different from T-Mobile's 3G so a AT&T 3G phone couldn't work with T-Moble's 3G signal and vice-visa. With 4G LTE, I believe this is a standard that both GSM and CDMA are "upgrading" to. I know that my CDMA phone needed a SIM card to work with the 4G LTE network (CDMA cards previously didn't require SIM cards).
sklivvz1971 13y ago
About time... companies like 3 and vodafone are basically the same network all over Europe, there is no justification for any roaming charges
UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
This is a "bad thing." And here is why: I hate roaming charges as much as anyone, nobody wants to pay 200%+ when they go to France or anywhere else within the EU. That being said, competition at least around here for mobile/3G is extremely healthy, prices have come down year on year and the choice/availability has gone up. What I fear would happen if this went into force is that many (all?) of the smaller operators would go out of business overnight as they couldn't find a network within all continental european countries who will roam for them at a reasonable price. Then you'll have Orange/Vodafone/etc who own a lot of the infrastructure across europe leverage that so essentially they're the only competitive player and get to set the prices however they want. They'll sell their subsidiaries roaming at X and their competition roaming at X*1,000. Just look at the US: Their networks are inter-state, and as a result of having to cover such a large landmass it is almost non competitive. You have three companies controlling the whole country. Prices are extremely high and services/choice is poor. I'd take what we have now, roaming charges and all, over a three network oligopoly.
- r3m6 13y ago
  >They'll sell their subsidiaries roaming at X and their competition roaming at X*1,000. I doubt that would be legal. Anyone knows for sure?
  - kolektiv 13y ago
    If you're drafting legislation around roaming, why not write in reasonable competition provisioning while you're there? It won't be legal if we don't want it to be.
  - UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
    As far as I know the EU does cap roaming charges already, and they could continue to do so in the future. But as far as I know there is no rule which forces companies to charge equal prices for their competition and their subsidiaries across borders. For one example, Vodafone UK for £3 will let you use your "UK minutes, texts, and data" in any european country. The reason they're able to offer that is because Vodafone runs networks in most european countries.
stingraycharles 13y ago
Explain to me, why wouldn't this merely result in the phone companies charging higher monthly fees?
- dalke 13y ago
  Because that number is the most competitive and most user-visible. When you buy your phone service, you get to compare it to the cost of other phone service providers.
- notimetorelax 13y ago
  It might, but then there are several companies to choose from and free market principles seem to work in this case. At least there's usually some local regulations keeping companies from colluding.
- mcv 13y ago
  Most of the phone market is very transparent. It's just the roaming charges that make them feel like a bait and switch. Higher monthly fees are better than roaming charges, because there's clear and transparent competition there.
- Jach 13y ago
  Simply, because the monthly fees aren't already higher. If a company could raise the prices and still keep enough users such that it generates more profit than currently, it would have already done so. If they could and haven't, they're leaving money on the table that a competitor could take. Companies have a lot of incentive to hire people to notice if money is being left out, so it's not prudent to assume there is.
- rmc 13y ago
  Although it's possible, it's unlikely. Roaming costs used to be obscene, like €1.70 per minute to make or receive a call (that's what it cost me in non-EU Switzerland a few months ago). Telecos would have to make monthly costs ten times more expensive to compensate. No matter what, telecos are going to lose out on the roaming cash cow.
- RivieraKid 13y ago
porsager 13y ago
This is definitely not a good thing. It is a step in the wrong direction that the European Union gains more power to regulate the market in this fashion. The reason operators are able to charge for roaming as they do, has a lot to do with the fact that the telecommunication business isn't a free business. Currently only a select few in each country who are paying a large licensing fee are allowed to set up the different types of networks (GSM, UMTS etc). What is happening is you grant special benefits to the operators, so they are working in a protected environment. Of course they are going to charge extra if no-one is there to bid lower. What the EU is doing right now is trying to fix a symptom created by an already wacky system that their member states have created themselves.
- vidarh 13y ago
  > Currently only a select few in each country who are paying a large licensing fee are allowed to set up the different types of networks Just like in pretty much every country in the world. Spectrum is a public resource, and not an infinite one. Every allocation given to a private company deprives society of other potential uses of that spectrum. The EU communications market is already vastly more competitive than e.g. the US market in many areas, _thanks_ to extensive regulation to force unbundling of a lot of network and consumer services. This is about fixing some of the remaining problems, yes. If anything, the regulation of the communications market in the EU is both one of the biggest successes in recent years, and one of the areas where EU decisions are most popular with EU citizens.
  - porsager 13y ago
    That is exactly the Point. Spectrum is scarce, and just like land areas are treated(mostly) with property rights, so should radio waves. That it historically has been mistreated doesn't make the solution in the subject any better.
  - mason240 13y ago
    >Spectrum is a public resource, and not an infinite one. Every allocation given to a private company deprives society of other potential uses of that spectrum. Then you divide the spectrum into chunks and sell 10 year licences to each one to the highest bidder. Problem solved, regulatory capture averted.
driverdan 13y ago
I'm appalled by all the anti free market comments here. Governments have no business dictating simple contractual agreements such as this. So long as governments allow adequate competition the markets will meet customer demands.
- njs12345 13y ago
  I'll bite. Can the telecoms market support 'adequate competition'? Is the telecoms market in the US a 'free market'?
- DanBC 13y ago
  > So long as governments allow adequate competition the markets will meet customer demands. This is demonstrably not the case with cell phone service providers. Mobile telephony providers use deliberately confusing pricing to prevent price comparison. They use contract lock in to prevent customers switching contracts. They exploit the apathy and inertia of customers. What would work in an ideal situation is not what would work with the situation we have. Tightly regulated, often government owned, communication networks are being deregulated, split off from those government owned companies, while expanding into new markets. We need regulation to prevent incumbents from exploiting their government-subsidized position, and to protect naive users from themselves.
  - driverdan 13y ago
    > Mobile telephony providers use deliberately confusing pricing to prevent price comparison. They use contract lock in to prevent customers switching contracts. They exploit the apathy and inertia of customers. There are many providers now who don't require contracts. Every provider in the US has some sort of prepaid / no contract plan. The prices are much better than contract plans too, at least in the US. > We need regulation to prevent incumbents from exploiting their government-subsidized position, and to protect naive users from themselves. No, you highlighted one of the problems. The government needs to stop backing monopolies / oligopolies and allow competition to flourish. Government involvement always compounds itself. Subsidization and promotion requires regulation later to compensate for the lack of a free market.
kalleboo 13y ago
> Other new measures include open internet safeguards to stop broadband companies blocking legal but competing websites and services such as Skype I also like the look of this. Not quite full network neutrality but in the same spirit.
zokier 13y ago
Interestingly enough (Telia)Sonera has already removed (some) of it's roaming charges when roaming on their own network. I think that's quite nice of them, even though it probably was mostly a marketing move preempting this EU decision.
- spurgu 13y ago
  Yeah I just recently found out about it. Awesome news as I just moved from Finland to Estonia (but will spend a lot of time in Finland too) a week ago. It would be a hassle with two SIM-cards. It has always sucked to go on trips through many countries where you really could use affordable data, to book hotels/hostels, view Google Maps, Translate among a million small things that make mobile internet useful in the first place. I really love this about the EU; making decisions for the people instead of corporations.
borispavlovic 13y ago
This will eventually lead to mobile phone charges balancing all over the European continent. Otherwise people in Denmark will be using Bulgarian or Romanian pre-paid SIM cards buying credit online assuming that mobile providers can't charge the same for the services in richer and poorer countries.
- jakub_g 13y ago
  This could be the case for the internet, but AFAIU not (so far) for the calls or SMS. No roaming fees means that if you have a Bulgarian SIM and live in Denmark and you call a Bulgarian number, you will pay as if you were in Bulgaria. But they can still tax you more when you're calling to the Danish or any non-Bulgarian number. Anyway, for people who rather use internet than make phone calls, this can be a good deal indeed.
  - aestra 13y ago
    When we are all using VoIP rather than traditional voice, this is relevant.
martinml 13y ago
While it is nice the EU is regulating the mobile phone market like this, it sometimes creates funny situations. In many countries it's cheaper to send an SMS being abroad. Right now the regulated cap for an SMS sent in roaming is at €0.09 and will be €0.06 in 2014, but sending texts from your country often costs €0.15 :)
- m_gloeckl 13y ago
  Yes, I noticed that, when I was visiting Crete a week ago. Back home in Germany a text message costs me 0.14€, during vacation I was paying 0.09€. Regulations create funny pricing structures sometimes. :)
- gaius 13y ago
  It's not unusual to find while roaming that MMS is cheaper than SMS. As in it would be cheaper for me to write out my message by hand, take a photo of it and sent that, than just to send a text message.
- sasoon 13y ago
  Yeah, if I want to call UK number from my home network it will cost me 0.85€, and if I call the same number while roaming, it will cost me 0.30€ :-)
netcan 13y ago
Good or bad this is central planning, or something very close to it. Price controls. Mandated alliances. Minimum coverage requirements.
- SEMW 13y ago
  > "From 2014, customers would be able to keep costs down by selecting another provider for calls, texts and internet data services while travelling, if their own network charges extra for service abroad. They could do this without having to change their phone number or buy a new sim card." Seems to me like one of the goals of the new regime is to move at least a bit away from the (somewhat clumsy) regulatory approach of setting price controls, in favour of an approach of reducing transactional costs in order to enable free-market competition between providers in different countries.
- kristofferR 13y ago
  Just goes to show that most issues isn't either black or white. Regulation can be wonderful if done right, and horrible if done wrong.
denzil_correa 13y ago
Long time coming. India (which is a pretty huge country) did away with roaming (incoming call) charges back in 2003. What followed, was a telecom revolution; albeit with the evil of corruption along the way but good did come out of sensible and foresight.
benev 13y ago
About four years ago I lived in Tanzania. I had a sim card from Zain(* ). As standard, it had no roaming charges in East Africa and parts of the middle east. In foreign countries, you could even make calls at the local rate. It's great to see Europe catching up. * Now (I think) part of Airtel.
pisarzp 13y ago
I think this is great, and I cannot wait for this to happen, but we also should credit some operators for their current efforts. O2 launched in UK Tu Go app which I find really great. It basically allows you to make and receive calls (and text messages) over wifi . Not only it is great if you have spotty reception at home, but you can use your phone whenever you find public wifi abroad.
drchaos 13y ago
As much as I hate the outrageous high roaming charges, I'm not sure regulating them completely away is the best idea. Dictating companies how much and for what they can charge is one of the strongest possible market intervention, and may very well lead to less competition and therefore, higher prices and (eventually) less innovation. Personally I think the same effect could be achieved by a much smaller intervention, namely decoupling billing from physical SIM cards. If it was possible to get the local (prepaid) rate without having to get a local SIM card (which, even in 2013, is often a somewhat difficult procedure, especially if you don't speak the local language), there would not only be no reason for roaming charges any more (just get a cheap prepaid rate and you are set), but there would also be more (not less) competition, because one could switch providers any time, even in his own country. The phone number, of course, should remain bound to the SIM card, just the billing should be "virtualized".
kayoone 13y ago
Hear hear, its costs them 7bn ? How about 7bn less revenue from something that is so overpriced its not even funny. Im glad WhatsApp already killed SMS in many countries, the money made on overpriced SMS/MMS must have been ridiculous.. I hope IP will replace all the other stuff eventually. If your abroad its relatively easy to find a Wifi and use Skype/Viber/WhatsApp, so we just need to get even more Wifi!
ogdoad 13y ago
I thought it was already passed law, to come into effect July 2014. Guess I was wrong. In any case, it'd be nice not to have roaming data charges.
smutticus 13y ago
Roaming charge made more sense when you were actually roaming to another carrier when you went to another country. But now that carriers in the EU are almost all trans-national roaming charges make less sense. They're just a relic of the past.
OmIsMyShield 13y ago
I applaud this - but it feels a bit like treating the symptom, a cause being regulation that helped create an oligopoly.
xlevus 13y ago
Interestingly, Hutchinson/Three has started to remove global roaming fees from their own network. http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home?id=1229 http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home?id=1229

239 points by Libertatea 13y ago

This is one of the things the EU is really good at: making people-centric decisions, instead of corporation-helping choices. This roaming-charges change has actually been a long time coming, with forced decreases in tariffs for a while now, so it shouldn't surprise anyone. I just wish some similar agreement can be reached (in time) with countries outside the EU.

CaptainZapp 13y ago
> I just wish some similar agreement can be reached (in time) with countries outside the EU. Intercontinental roaming charges are a bad joke (3$ incoming, 5$ out and yes, that's per minute) . What I do is to get a local SIM and communicate the number to those contacts that need it. Internet (sometimes 20$ per MB and yes, you read that right) is less of a problem due the ubiquity of free WLANs. Another really excellent thing the EU did is to mandate mini USB as phone chargers. With the noticeable exception of Apple every newer phone can be charged with any newer charger. This used to be a major pet peevee of mine.
- masklinn 13y ago
  > sometimes 20$ per MB and yes, you read that right I can confirm, just checked my data roaming rate (from the EU), it's 0.15€/MB for European (not just EU, also Switzerland, Norway or Iceland) roaming (which is already crazy expensive, my in-country plan is 0.0075€/MB even ignoring that it also provides voice and SMS); 0.30€/MB from the US and 13.00€/MB from just about everywhere else
- zrgiu_ 13y ago
  I don't know if this still the case, but a while ago i bought an iPhone from UK (after the mini USB mandate), and it came with an adapter to miniUSB in the box. Even Apple had to abide to the new regulation. As for the roaming charges, I completely agree. Even now, within Europe, it's really bad for data. I've traveled through 10 EU countries in the last 3 months, and had to buy 7 SIM cards, as my home carrier charges 2EUR for 5MB. I was lucky with my 3LikeHome sim card from Austria, which you can use with your home rates in a few other countries.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    > it came with an adapter to miniUSB in the box Yeah but that's an adapter, even though it does abide by the rules you still have to carry the adapter around. Most manufacturers just switched to miniUSB entirely, so you don't need an adapter, any combination of charger and phone should work (in practice there may be issues with undervoltage, I've seen combinations of phones and chargers not work)
    - desas 13y ago
      There's not even rules, the EU just asked them to sort it out, otherwise it would legislate so they had have a common standard.
      - celticninja 13y ago
        even better
  - cja 13y ago
    Heyah (Poland) have a 25PLN (£5) deal that give you 1.2GB to use anywhere in the EU. Calling and texting prices aren't so good though.
- cabalamat 13y ago
  > Another really excellent thing the EU did is to mandate mini USB as phone chargers Wasn't it the Chinese who originally mandated that? Either way, it's a good thing.
  - mason240 13y ago
    Google mandated it for all phones with Android, which it when it became the de facto standard.
  - Someone 13y ago
    AFAIK, the EU initiated that. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply (and it is _micro_ USB. Not that much smaller than mini USB, but thinner and better, mechanically. See http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18552/why-was-mini-usb-deprecated-in-favor-of-micro-usb http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18552/why-was...)
- speleding 13y ago
  micro USB is actually a very poor choice for a charger connection: it is max rated at 2.5W (way too low for an iPhone), it is keyed (you can only plug it in one way) and it is expensive (a whole bunch of pins you don't need). On top of that many people confuse it with mini USB, like you just did.
  - SEMW 13y ago
    My understanding is that, contrary to GP's comment, the EU didn't 'mandate microUSB'. The original MoU required the manufacturers[1] to get together to decide on a common external power supply "to allow for full compatibility and safety of chargers and mobile phones". So while officially CENELEC decided the standard, in practice they were never going to not adopt the manufacturers' recommendation, which was microUSB. As for amount of power, I believe the USB power delivery spec allows 5V devices to draw up to 10W of power (5V at 2A) - though it's fairly new (2012), so I don't know how widely used it is yet. [1] Motorola, LGE, Samsung, RIM, Nokia, SonyEricsson, NEC, Apple, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments
    - speleding 13y ago
      Yes, the EU only mandated that the industry choose a common standard so they picked the cheapest of all the options they had. With the newer spec you can indeed draw more power but it requires hardware negotiation to prevent older devices catching on fire. Some of the other options on the table at the time were much more elegant and extensible to, for example, household appliances (USB is not allowed for use in the bathroom or kitchen). The other options were a few cents per connector more expensive so they never had a chance when the EU decided to leave it to the industry.
  - colechristensen 13y ago
    Micro USB has 4 pins (+/- Data +/- Power, 1 additional pin for host/device determination) Where are the bunches of pins you don't need? And the power ratings are functionally design minimums so your USB device must work within those boundaries, while most phones and phone chargers can exceed them. My kindle charger outputs 5 V 1.8 A for a total of 9 watts. My droid charger outputs 5.1 V 0.75 A for a total of 3.8 watts.
devx 13y ago
Hopefully it will stay that way. I think global corporations have started increasing their lobbying in EU rapidly. It may be why the EU Comission usually seems to make the worse decisions, and the opposite of what the EU Parliament wants. If the lobbying extends from the EU Comission to the EU Parliament, that could change.

tluyben2 13y ago

About time. I'm waiting for this for a while. I travel a lot in EU and it's very annoying going around with a bag of sims in my pocket. Kroes does some nice things; hopefully it'll go through.

jcrei 13y ago

This could have the potential to become quite disruptive. If there are no roaming charges, I will be free to select any operator from any EU country and am not stuck with the ones where I reside. This will increase competition, and lower prices (or service levels will increase).

Jacqued 13y ago
I don't know about the situation in most of Europe, but I think at least some countries could be severely disrupted by French operators, which seen some very low cost alternatives emerge since the irruption of a 4th operator in early 2012. 2h + SMS only costs 2€/mo, where it used to be 16-25€ only two years ago ; and the full package (unlimited everything, with data bandwith capped after 3GB) 20€ Now if there's a country with even cheaper mobile plans... I'd like to see that
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- solnyshok 13y ago
  Latvia - Tele2, 9eur for unlinited domestic calls/sms+2GB of full speed, after that capped to 64kbps but still unlimited.
- TsiCClawOfLight 13y ago
  Austria...
swombat 13y ago
Not really - no roaming charges doesn't mean it's not more expensive to call people from other countries. So if you have a number in France, but you call mostly UK people, it will still cost you more than if you had a UK number - it just won't cost you more if you're calling them from France than if you're calling them from the UK.
- notimetorelax 13y ago
  Other option: if you have friends or relatives in the other country, just bring your SIM card with you when you leave. Frankly it's so tiring to live on the border and pay for the roaming just because cell phone decided to be in roaming.

antr 13y ago

I hope this is the tip of the iceberg of better things to come. One of the most disruptive ideas the EU is working on (among alternatives) is detaching the network from the operators. This can considerably reduce network capex, homogenise network technology and allow for a real single EU telecom space. By having operators become clients of a single network users will benefit from increase pan-EU competition, with more competitive and transparent rates. This has been partly done at national levels in similar sectors, specially in the gas and electricity sectors (see National Grid in the UK, Snam Rete Gas & Terna in Italy, etc.). Gas and electricity networks are private but regulated, and third parties have access rights to the network to retail gas & electricity. In this telecom case, operators don't have commodity risk, which makes third-party access to the network infinitely easier. Fingers crossed.

easytiger 13y ago
> One of the most disruptive ideas the EU is working on (among alternatives) is detaching the network utilizes operators. Since i was quite young it blew my mind that we didn't have one universal network which every network utilises. It is clearly more efficient, removes redundancy, spreads costs.
- lrem 13y ago
  It's not that crystal clear. I live in France now, where the last mile cables are detached from operators. As the cable to the place I live in is quite bad, no operator will ever do a thing about it. In Poland, it's still an anarchy... So when I receive bad service, I go to the competition and they put their own cable to my place. They have to compete on that part of quality of service, not just say "it's just bad around here, it's not our problem".
- mavhc 13y ago
  Networks can never work with capitalism, as there's more benefit to extending an existing network than creating multiple competing networks. Roads, Internet, wired phones. Thus the network might as well be owned and run by the government, and access to it sold to the public/companies.

felxh 13y ago

Long overdue, especially for people living in the smaller EU countries, where driving ~3 hours in any direction will render your smartphone useless (or very expensive). Large carriers, which are complaining the loudest, shouldn't have an issue with this, since they are present in virtually all EU member states.

masklinn 13y ago
Of course they have an issue, because they're present in virtually all of the EU it's completely free money for them right now.
- felxh 13y ago
  exactly my point, but I could have probably been more explicit!
- easytiger 13y ago
  Three in the UK clearly saw this coming and recently made roaming in several countries completely part of your monthly package
  - mjs 13y ago
    The countries are: Ireland, Australia, Italy, Austria, Hong Kong, Sweden and Denmark. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23896896 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23896896 (This doesn't look to be symmetric, for some reason--if you're a Three customer in one of those countries I don't think you avoid roaming charges in the UK.)
    - crocowhile 13y ago
      Three customers in Italy had the no-extra-charge-when-roaming feature already 4-5 years ago actually. That was both for data and voice. http://www.tre.it/opzioni/estero/all-estero-come-a-casa http://www.tre.it/opzioni/estero/all-estero-come-a-casa EDIT: I see there was a bit of overhead actually. not quite the same tariff.

masklinn 13y ago

> Her proposals have faced fierce opposition from the largest networks, including Vodafone, Orange and Telefónica, which say the end of roaming within Europe could cost them €7bn (£5.9bn). Delicious tears. Though I object to the use of the word "cost", it will remove unmerited earnings but will not add costs to their balance sheet: notice how the operators whining the most are the pan-european ones? That's because they can currently charge roaming fees for operations within their network, fleecing their own users.

devx 13y ago
Not to mention this could potentially make them more money if all of the sudden people can just talk to their relatives in other EU countries without having to pay "special fees".
- pisarzp 13y ago
  I think this is still years ahead of us. Only roaming charges will be cancelled, calling German numbers from UK will still cost you a fortune. What is idiotic, it only makes everyone to install Viver/Skype/whatever and use phone functionality less.
  - kristofferR 13y ago
    Most carriers in Norway has begun to charge the same rate for calls/SMS/data to all the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland) as local usage, so it's not that unrealistic.
  - porsupah 13y ago
    Not necessarily. With UK carrier rate structures as they are, it can often be cheaper to call internationally than within the UK. Consider, for example, GiffGaff (part of O2): within the UK, 10p/min. Meanwhile, calling internationally from the UK: Germany, 5p/min; India, 2p/min; USA, 3p/min.
    - MichaelGG 13y ago

nohuck13 13y ago

Am I the only on that thinks this is a bit of an overreach? Seems to me, good justifications for legislating would be -If customers were being tricked into paying roaming charges in nefarious ways; -If there were serious externalities somehow not being included in the roaming charge transaction -If there were monopolistic / market manipulating behaviour going on. -If the companies were subject to a tragedy-of-the-commons situation where private resolution was not feasible (they're not- the public broadcast spectrum is both rival and excludable in practice). Instead, the state interest according to Kroes is that it's an "irritant." This kind of top-down control seems a bit counter to the hacker/startup ethos. Edit: if you're going to down vote, please can you comment and have a dialogue?

masklinn 13y ago
> Am I the only on that thinks this is a bit of an overreach? Not a all. Vodafone, Telefonica and Orange completely agree with you. > Instead, the state interest according to Kroes is that it's an "irritant." The state interest is the people's interest. Roaming charges are not in the user's interest: 1. It's very easy to be hit by roaming charges in Europe if you're not careful, many countries can be gone through in an hour or three and since Schengen moving across borders has become an habitual past-time. 2. The charges are not fair and not about costs these days, they're about free money, notice how the operators which have issues with that are present or have partnerships in pretty much all of the EU? A roaming user doesn't cost them much, but it earns them a lot. 3. Roaming charges are especially problematic with modern "always connected" smartphones, forgetting to disable data roaming (if you can even do so) is common, and the charges for data roaming are completely crazy.
- rmc 13y ago
  If you live near a border, and the 'foreign' network mast is closer than your 'national' one, and has a stronger signal, you might be 'roaming' while at home.
  - mcv 13y ago
    That should definitely be illegal.

Systemic33 13y ago

As a resident in Denmark, this is awesome news. It really sucks that you've got so many internet connected things, but after 300km MAX, you are on the other side of the border, and you are reduced to feature phone-like capabilities (Thanks Nokia/HERE for offline maps). To people from US; Imagine living on the east coast (with the smaller states) and every time you move outside of your state, you had to use a feature phone.

maxsilver 13y ago
We don't have to imagine it -- that is how it is in the US. For example, if you are on T-Mobile USA, living on the east coast, anytime you drive west, after about 100km your "4G" smartphone is reduced to a feature phone (either on T-Mobile's own GRPS/EDGE-only network, or hyper-restricted voice/sms-only roaming on AT&T). This happens even if the other operators have extensive 3G/4G/LTE networks available in those cities.
- Systemic33 13y ago
  Aren't AT&T, Verizon, etc, nation-wide operators?
  - aestra 13y ago
    Yes, they are. HOWEVER: The USA is HUGE. It's not cost effective to put data where every inch of land is covered, ever slow data (EDGE). There's a ton of sparsely populated land, and rural areas. T-Mobile is a small operator and has the crappiest network coverage. It is 1000x better than it was 4 years ago, as they are adding more coverage, but it is expensive and slow. T-mobile is the worst for data coverage, and voice coverage. I had them for years, and I eventually dropped them for Verizon because I was finding myself without any cellphone service so often, because I travel often, and I find myself in rural areas. If I stayed in the city all the time it would work for me. That means no voice, no SMS, no data. Take a look at T-Mobile's 3G and 4G coverage map (and voice): http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/pcc.aspx/ http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/pcc.aspx/ Verizon: http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/support/coverage-locator http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/support/coverage-locator Sprint: http://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp http://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp AT&T: http://www.att.com/maps/wireless-coverage.html http://www.att.com/maps/wireless-coverage.html The other big issue is we have two standards here. GSM and CDMA. GSM is what T-Mobile and AT&T use, and CDMA is what Verizon and Sprint use. These can't play nice-nice with each other. Plus AT&T's 3G was different from T-Mobile's 3G so a AT&T 3G phone couldn't work with T-Moble's 3G signal and vice-visa. With 4G LTE, I believe this is a standard that both GSM and CDMA are "upgrading" to. I know that my CDMA phone needed a SIM card to work with the 4G LTE network (CDMA cards previously didn't require SIM cards).

sklivvz1971 13y ago

About time... companies like 3 and vodafone are basically the same network all over Europe, there is no justification for any roaming charges

UnoriginalGuy 13y ago

This is a "bad thing." And here is why: I hate roaming charges as much as anyone, nobody wants to pay 200%+ when they go to France or anywhere else within the EU. That being said, competition at least around here for mobile/3G is extremely healthy, prices have come down year on year and the choice/availability has gone up. What I fear would happen if this went into force is that many (all?) of the smaller operators would go out of business overnight as they couldn't find a network within all continental european countries who will roam for them at a reasonable price. Then you'll have Orange/Vodafone/etc who own a lot of the infrastructure across europe leverage that so essentially they're the only competitive player and get to set the prices however they want. They'll sell their subsidiaries roaming at X and their competition roaming at X*1,000. Just look at the US: Their networks are inter-state, and as a result of having to cover such a large landmass it is almost non competitive. You have three companies controlling the whole country. Prices are extremely high and services/choice is poor. I'd take what we have now, roaming charges and all, over a three network oligopoly.

r3m6 13y ago
>They'll sell their subsidiaries roaming at X and their competition roaming at X*1,000. I doubt that would be legal. Anyone knows for sure?
- kolektiv 13y ago
  If you're drafting legislation around roaming, why not write in reasonable competition provisioning while you're there? It won't be legal if we don't want it to be.
- UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
  As far as I know the EU does cap roaming charges already, and they could continue to do so in the future. But as far as I know there is no rule which forces companies to charge equal prices for their competition and their subsidiaries across borders. For one example, Vodafone UK for £3 will let you use your "UK minutes, texts, and data" in any european country. The reason they're able to offer that is because Vodafone runs networks in most european countries.

stingraycharles 13y ago

Explain to me, why wouldn't this merely result in the phone companies charging higher monthly fees?

dalke 13y ago
Because that number is the most competitive and most user-visible. When you buy your phone service, you get to compare it to the cost of other phone service providers.
notimetorelax 13y ago
It might, but then there are several companies to choose from and free market principles seem to work in this case. At least there's usually some local regulations keeping companies from colluding.
mcv 13y ago
Most of the phone market is very transparent. It's just the roaming charges that make them feel like a bait and switch. Higher monthly fees are better than roaming charges, because there's clear and transparent competition there.
Jach 13y ago
Simply, because the monthly fees aren't already higher. If a company could raise the prices and still keep enough users such that it generates more profit than currently, it would have already done so. If they could and haven't, they're leaving money on the table that a competitor could take. Companies have a lot of incentive to hire people to notice if money is being left out, so it's not prudent to assume there is.
rmc 13y ago
Although it's possible, it's unlikely. Roaming costs used to be obscene, like €1.70 per minute to make or receive a call (that's what it cost me in non-EU Switzerland a few months ago). Telecos would have to make monthly costs ten times more expensive to compensate. No matter what, telecos are going to lose out on the roaming cash cow.
RivieraKid 13y ago

porsager 13y ago

This is definitely not a good thing. It is a step in the wrong direction that the European Union gains more power to regulate the market in this fashion. The reason operators are able to charge for roaming as they do, has a lot to do with the fact that the telecommunication business isn't a free business. Currently only a select few in each country who are paying a large licensing fee are allowed to set up the different types of networks (GSM, UMTS etc). What is happening is you grant special benefits to the operators, so they are working in a protected environment. Of course they are going to charge extra if no-one is there to bid lower. What the EU is doing right now is trying to fix a symptom created by an already wacky system that their member states have created themselves.

vidarh 13y ago
> Currently only a select few in each country who are paying a large licensing fee are allowed to set up the different types of networks Just like in pretty much every country in the world. Spectrum is a public resource, and not an infinite one. Every allocation given to a private company deprives society of other potential uses of that spectrum. The EU communications market is already vastly more competitive than e.g. the US market in many areas, _thanks_ to extensive regulation to force unbundling of a lot of network and consumer services. This is about fixing some of the remaining problems, yes. If anything, the regulation of the communications market in the EU is both one of the biggest successes in recent years, and one of the areas where EU decisions are most popular with EU citizens.
- porsager 13y ago
  That is exactly the Point. Spectrum is scarce, and just like land areas are treated(mostly) with property rights, so should radio waves. That it historically has been mistreated doesn't make the solution in the subject any better.
- mason240 13y ago
  >Spectrum is a public resource, and not an infinite one. Every allocation given to a private company deprives society of other potential uses of that spectrum. Then you divide the spectrum into chunks and sell 10 year licences to each one to the highest bidder. Problem solved, regulatory capture averted.

driverdan 13y ago

I'm appalled by all the anti free market comments here. Governments have no business dictating simple contractual agreements such as this. So long as governments allow adequate competition the markets will meet customer demands.

njs12345 13y ago
I'll bite. Can the telecoms market support 'adequate competition'? Is the telecoms market in the US a 'free market'?
DanBC 13y ago
> So long as governments allow adequate competition the markets will meet customer demands. This is demonstrably not the case with cell phone service providers. Mobile telephony providers use deliberately confusing pricing to prevent price comparison. They use contract lock in to prevent customers switching contracts. They exploit the apathy and inertia of customers. What would work in an ideal situation is not what would work with the situation we have. Tightly regulated, often government owned, communication networks are being deregulated, split off from those government owned companies, while expanding into new markets. We need regulation to prevent incumbents from exploiting their government-subsidized position, and to protect naive users from themselves.
- driverdan 13y ago
  > Mobile telephony providers use deliberately confusing pricing to prevent price comparison. They use contract lock in to prevent customers switching contracts. They exploit the apathy and inertia of customers. There are many providers now who don't require contracts. Every provider in the US has some sort of prepaid / no contract plan. The prices are much better than contract plans too, at least in the US. > We need regulation to prevent incumbents from exploiting their government-subsidized position, and to protect naive users from themselves. No, you highlighted one of the problems. The government needs to stop backing monopolies / oligopolies and allow competition to flourish. Government involvement always compounds itself. Subsidization and promotion requires regulation later to compensate for the lack of a free market.

kalleboo 13y ago

> Other new measures include open internet safeguards to stop broadband companies blocking legal but competing websites and services such as Skype I also like the look of this. Not quite full network neutrality but in the same spirit.

zokier 13y ago

Interestingly enough (Telia)Sonera has already removed (some) of it's roaming charges when roaming on their own network. I think that's quite nice of them, even though it probably was mostly a marketing move preempting this EU decision.

spurgu 13y ago
Yeah I just recently found out about it. Awesome news as I just moved from Finland to Estonia (but will spend a lot of time in Finland too) a week ago. It would be a hassle with two SIM-cards. It has always sucked to go on trips through many countries where you really could use affordable data, to book hotels/hostels, view Google Maps, Translate among a million small things that make mobile internet useful in the first place. I really love this about the EU; making decisions for the people instead of corporations.

borispavlovic 13y ago

This will eventually lead to mobile phone charges balancing all over the European continent. Otherwise people in Denmark will be using Bulgarian or Romanian pre-paid SIM cards buying credit online assuming that mobile providers can't charge the same for the services in richer and poorer countries.

jakub_g 13y ago
This could be the case for the internet, but AFAIU not (so far) for the calls or SMS. No roaming fees means that if you have a Bulgarian SIM and live in Denmark and you call a Bulgarian number, you will pay as if you were in Bulgaria. But they can still tax you more when you're calling to the Danish or any non-Bulgarian number. Anyway, for people who rather use internet than make phone calls, this can be a good deal indeed.
- aestra 13y ago
  When we are all using VoIP rather than traditional voice, this is relevant.

martinml 13y ago

While it is nice the EU is regulating the mobile phone market like this, it sometimes creates funny situations. In many countries it's cheaper to send an SMS being abroad. Right now the regulated cap for an SMS sent in roaming is at €0.09 and will be €0.06 in 2014, but sending texts from your country often costs €0.15 :)

m_gloeckl 13y ago
Yes, I noticed that, when I was visiting Crete a week ago. Back home in Germany a text message costs me 0.14€, during vacation I was paying 0.09€. Regulations create funny pricing structures sometimes. :)
gaius 13y ago
It's not unusual to find while roaming that MMS is cheaper than SMS. As in it would be cheaper for me to write out my message by hand, take a photo of it and sent that, than just to send a text message.
sasoon 13y ago
Yeah, if I want to call UK number from my home network it will cost me 0.85€, and if I call the same number while roaming, it will cost me 0.30€ :-)

netcan 13y ago

Good or bad this is central planning, or something very close to it. Price controls. Mandated alliances. Minimum coverage requirements.

SEMW 13y ago
> "From 2014, customers would be able to keep costs down by selecting another provider for calls, texts and internet data services while travelling, if their own network charges extra for service abroad. They could do this without having to change their phone number or buy a new sim card." Seems to me like one of the goals of the new regime is to move at least a bit away from the (somewhat clumsy) regulatory approach of setting price controls, in favour of an approach of reducing transactional costs in order to enable free-market competition between providers in different countries.
kristofferR 13y ago
Just goes to show that most issues isn't either black or white. Regulation can be wonderful if done right, and horrible if done wrong.

denzil_correa 13y ago

Long time coming. India (which is a pretty huge country) did away with roaming (incoming call) charges back in 2003. What followed, was a telecom revolution; albeit with the evil of corruption along the way but good did come out of sensible and foresight.

benev 13y ago

About four years ago I lived in Tanzania. I had a sim card from Zain(* ). As standard, it had no roaming charges in East Africa and parts of the middle east. In foreign countries, you could even make calls at the local rate. It's great to see Europe catching up. * Now (I think) part of Airtel.

pisarzp 13y ago

I think this is great, and I cannot wait for this to happen, but we also should credit some operators for their current efforts. O2 launched in UK Tu Go app which I find really great. It basically allows you to make and receive calls (and text messages) over wifi . Not only it is great if you have spotty reception at home, but you can use your phone whenever you find public wifi abroad.

drchaos 13y ago

As much as I hate the outrageous high roaming charges, I'm not sure regulating them completely away is the best idea. Dictating companies how much and for what they can charge is one of the strongest possible market intervention, and may very well lead to less competition and therefore, higher prices and (eventually) less innovation. Personally I think the same effect could be achieved by a much smaller intervention, namely decoupling billing from physical SIM cards. If it was possible to get the local (prepaid) rate without having to get a local SIM card (which, even in 2013, is often a somewhat difficult procedure, especially if you don't speak the local language), there would not only be no reason for roaming charges any more (just get a cheap prepaid rate and you are set), but there would also be more (not less) competition, because one could switch providers any time, even in his own country. The phone number, of course, should remain bound to the SIM card, just the billing should be "virtualized".

kayoone 13y ago

Hear hear, its costs them 7bn ? How about 7bn less revenue from something that is so overpriced its not even funny. Im glad WhatsApp already killed SMS in many countries, the money made on overpriced SMS/MMS must have been ridiculous.. I hope IP will replace all the other stuff eventually. If your abroad its relatively easy to find a Wifi and use Skype/Viber/WhatsApp, so we just need to get even more Wifi!

ogdoad 13y ago

I thought it was already passed law, to come into effect July 2014. Guess I was wrong. In any case, it'd be nice not to have roaming data charges.

smutticus 13y ago

Roaming charge made more sense when you were actually roaming to another carrier when you went to another country. But now that carriers in the EU are almost all trans-national roaming charges make less sense. They're just a relic of the past.

OmIsMyShield 13y ago

I applaud this - but it feels a bit like treating the symptom, a cause being regulation that helped create an oligopoly.

xlevus 13y ago

Interestingly, Hutchinson/Three has started to remove global roaming fees from their own network. http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home?id=1229 http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home?id=1229