EC Calls For End To Mobile Roaming Charges 173
An anonymous reader writes "European travellers who use their mobile phones abroad could soon see a dramatic reduction in their bills, after the European Commission announced plans to eradicate roaming charges by 2015. In a consultation paper launched yesterday, the EC invited consumers, businesses, telecom operators and public authorities to evaluate the EU's existing roaming rules, and to share their ideas on the best ways to boost competition in roaming services. 'Huge differences between domestic and roaming charges have no place in a true EU Single Market,' said vice-president of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes. 'We need to address the source of current problems, namely a lack of competition, and to find a durable solution. But we are keeping an open mind on exactly what solution would work.'"
Re:Next article, "Telco accused of assassination" (Score:5, Informative)
I'm guessing their next thing is to put out a hit on the commission members.
Bad idea. Her position as an unelected official notwithstanding, Neelie Kroes is one of the good ones. Under her leadership as Commissioner for Competition, the EU already imposed actually meaningful penalties on Microsoft for anti-competitive behaviour. I don't suppose the telecoms companies are going to scare her, particularly given that they are so obviously ripping everyone off and the telecoms industry is so obviously not functioning effectively as a free market with open competition in this respect.
Re:common good (Score:4, Informative)
If the costs could've collapsed by nature, it probably would've happened to at least a miniscule degree in the last decade of widespread mobile phone use. The fact is that it's at a deadlock. Each carrier charges every other carrier obscene termination fees for roaming. It's that fee that then sets the roaming rate in the market. A network could choose to eat the huge fees the other networks charge when its own customers roam, but that'd probably drive it out of business. Or it could choose to drop its termination fees for non-customers roaming onto its network, but that doesn't benefit them in the slightest, it helps everyone else instead. They're stuck in a local minimum that free market actions can't hop them out of. They need a perturbation. If/when roaming fees are forced to drop, they should stay low without any further action.
(FWIW, your common or garden Symbian phone's had SIP integrated for a while, and it's hardly affected mobile VOIP adoption.)
Within Europe (Score:5, Informative)
You're probably American, and as such it's normal that you travel less outside your own country. Europeans in general travel more frequently to other European countries.
As a European I would never dream of purchasing "international service", not that it exists as a product here, I should not have to. The basic service is not a problem, your phone will work automatically.
When I travel abroad [at least in Europe] I expect to continue using my phone without any interruptions or changes. It works that way too, as every network has some local partner in the foreign country in question. The only issue is with the roaming charges, they can be exorbitant, but at least the EU is looking out for us.
The point is that within the European Union marketplace there is no room [by law] for abusive pricing that treats consumers differently depending on their nationality. The EU's goal is to create one, free market.
Re:Within Europe (Score:4, Informative)
You've got that the wrong way around. Some carriers in the US use a different system (CDMA) than the rest of the world. The few operators that use the standard system use it on a non-standard frequency. Every phone on the market today in the EU has support for multiple bands (usually 4 or 5), this is such a standard feature that they stopped advertising it years ago.