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.'"
Yes please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes please. (Score:5, Funny)
No, that's socialism, and you go to hell for that.
The free market is making people rich, and it's a sin to stop it with some dirty hippie collective like a government.
Re:Yes please. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's socialism, and you go to hell for that
I realise you're being sarcastic but it's still worth pointing out that this isn't socialism, it's the use of the same anti-collusion (anti-trust) laws that you guys have over in the US. Basically the EU Commission worked out that phone companies were colluding (illegal in the free market) to fix phone charges for roaming.
They then had the choice of going through a normal collusion investigation, spending huge amounts of tax-payers money in court and investigation fees and at the end probably coming up with fines of a few hundred million Euros - a small write-off for these companies. They chose the smart way - since the EU is one market companies shouldn't be allowed to charge higher prices for services that are 'imported' from another country in the EU.
It's a rare example of governments just doing their job properly, although it's not all perfect. 2015 is a long time, especially since they started this in 2007 or 2008 and since then have been slowly lowering prices - it's gone from extreme rip-off towards the current more moderate rip-off. They really should have brought this law in for 2011 - 3 or 4 years is more than enough time for phone companies to adjust, esp. since most mobile contracts are less than 2 years.
Re:Yes please. (Score:5, Interesting)
I was being sarcastic. But in the US, "free market" theocrats will tell you that anything government does is socialism. Because private business does everything better, as an article of faith (disproof has no power over faith). Meanwhile, we could use a healthy dose of actual socialism, instead of the private monopolism that's managed to take over our government and is busy eating what's left of generations of hard-won social democracy.
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http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=define:+socialism [google.com]
first definition
- a political theory advocating state ownership of industry
So while regulations may not be complete socialism, they are in fact a small part of it. As they are definitely the government controlling an industry.
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Ownership != control, and vice versa. Except in Sim City, Libertaria.
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I like how i got modded down for providing a definition of a word. lol
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So, in the U./S. the president is an elected official granted power by the people limited by the Constitution, subject to a two term limit and impeachable should he commit any high crimes or misdemeanors. But other than that he is the dictator for life.
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i dunno where you get that from.
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Same place that you got regulation=ownership.
If regulations are a little socialism, then the president is a little dictator for life.
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1. It's not for life.
2. You could say that about somethings, yes.
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Right, but 4-8 years is some part of a life isn't it?
Of course one could more usefully say that the president and a dictator for life have little in common and that socialism and regulation are similarly unrelated.
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Saywhatnow? National socialism and fascism are not interchangeable - the national socialist movements just happen to have operated in fascist ways in the past (and present).
Government regulation is not socialism either - to imply such, is to lay bare a complete lack of understanding for the various doctrines. Setting common parameters for economic activity is NOT the same as community ownership.
Socialism:
"an economic theory or system in
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THAT'S what the European Union government should have done to the cell companies. i.e. Punish them. Instead they did virtually nothing.
Not true. The roaming charges were lower already few years ago due to EUC action. Now you don't have this funny feeling when using your mobile while road-trippin' from Riga to Lisbon (unless you get into Switzerland).
Not Quite (Score:2)
I recently visited the US last month from Canada where I live. I left my cell phone off the entire trip. Were I to turn it on and actually use it I would be hit with the most draconian fees you ever did see....
So its not different across the pond. In fact if I were a betting man, I would say it is far worse.
I can only hope that Canada/US will finally drop the roaming BS. I mean really I don't understand it. I am with Bell Canada. There is a Bell in the US. Seriously stop screwing people already!
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I am with Bell Canada. There is a Bell in the US. Seriously stop screwing people already!
What's the weather like over there? Must be sunny and warm all of the time. "Stop screwing" people? The (Baby) Bell(s)? To paraphrase Nathan Filler, "Darlin, that's what they do". The fact that they can screw you over both individually (as a state, province, country, whatever) and collectively is what makes it all worthwhile.
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Right, and roaming charges have never even existed within most of the individual member states.
However the EU is still not a single federal nation state like the US, Australia or Germany are, for eg. Eliminating what is effectively an import tariff on a service provided from one member state being 'imported' into another is the job of government, and does create a free market in the end (2015 in this case).
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Yeah tariff was probably the wrong word there. Better said it's the phone companies exploiting the fact the eu is halfway between a trade agreement and a proper federal state to try and collude across national boundaries. This does require government to solve, the eu govt specifically.
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Two points the customers didn't complain, The customers simply got nationwide wireless(I have had it for a decade now), because the customers like to travel and in the USA there are no borders to check through.
The EU is made of countries, each soverign unto themselves. you have to pay international rates to go internationally.
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in the USA there are no borders to check through.
Afaict other than moving between the british isles and mainland europe there aren't in the EU either these days.
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Larger cellphone networks are cheaper per unit served than smaller networks. The first cellphone provider offering combined networks with no roaming charges must be attracting hordes of customers for almost no additional costs, maybe even lower unit costs. In a free market, providers with roaming charges would not survive.
That roaming charges are extinct in the US is a sign that a free market must have worked there. That roaming charges are still rampant in the EU means that something or someone here is bus
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They did only seem to eliminate domestic roaming charges, and while that's appreciated it doesn't address the larger issue.
I'm kind of at a loss for why T-Mobile can't introduce an "our-network-only" roaming option. A good amount of the time when I'm in europe i never leave TMo's network, yet i still take it in the ass if i use my US sim card.
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There aren't enough parties for a true free market (oligoply). The data roaming charges are ridiculous. I pay 10 EUR a month for max 1GB traffic. When I cross the border to Belgium that goes to 10 EUR per MB. A thousandfold increase! And we all know what it costs to transfer 1MB from one country to another these days: practically nothing!
The result is that everybody disables data whenever they cross the border.
So they make practically nothing on it anyway...
OTOH national data and voice rates are very reason
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I expect that national laws make the national data and voice rates work well enough in those markets. The EU hasn't regulated the cartel across Europe well enough yet. But at least it's not a state-owned monopoly, or the cartel-friendly state the US has become.
Re:Yes please. (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't national laws that make the national data prices work - it's plain competion.
The thing is; When people sign up for a contract, they all ask
1) How much do calls cost
2) How much does data cost
3) What 'free' phone do I get
so the companies compete on these
Then they shaft you with the items that you weren't paying attention to; International roaming, calls, etc.
Since these are a small concern for most people - there isn't any real competion in it.
Same thing with credit card companies; They compete on the headline interest rate, then shaft you on the fees.
Customers are shallow in their purchasing decisions, and there aren't many choices anyway (~four operators in the UK).
Competition works for the headline stuff, but in complex products it doesn't work for the secondary items.
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Telco cartel, cable cartel, oil cartel, bank cartel, insurance cartel, pharmaco cartel, car cartel... all too big to fail, too big to compete with. And those are just the ones in the news for epic abuses this year - with no change to their business model or even executives.
The "punishments" you're referring to are tiny costs of doing business compared to the huge profits these cartels reap by suppressing competition. "Illegal" means something different to a mere human or small business than it does to a car
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Telco cartel, cable cartel, oil cartel, bank cartel, insurance cartel, pharmaco cartel...
Good point. But:
How is Europe any different? The EU and its Member States have plenty of monopolies, duopolies, and cartels too. Some of those monopolies are run by the government itself. The grandparent implied* the US is a corporate serfdom, while the EU is paradise, and it's simply not true.
* "at least [the EU] is not...the cartel-friendly state the US has become."
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How is Europe any different?
unfortunately - they're quite similar. US companies in EU introduced "best practices" from US, ie. writing law by corporate lawyers. Europe is still somehow better, because scale of corporate law-writing activity is smaller. However, we already have US-coprorate-inspired copyright laws, IP laws, GMO laws ...
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Your post is correct except that cell phone roaming is anything but a free market.
A free market is making people rich, a monopoly is making everyone else dirt poor. Destroying monopolies is one of the core functions of the government, because otherwise we would long be living under the boot of something like "Omni Consumer Products Inc.", which is bad for everyone, not only dirty hippies.
There are at max 2-3 cell phone networks per country. Most of them are local subsidiaries of transnational companies. For
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Expensive roaming is the exact reason I simply don't have a data account on my phone.
When I'm in my home town, I'm usually either in office or at home, or not long away from both. I've not much use for data roaming here.
It's only interesting when traveling (though hotels these days usually have Internet service included, and open wifi networks are plentiful). But for that purpose the charges simply put me off.
I'm European, not living there now, and would love to see more reasonable roaming charges across
Not Outside Europe (Score:2)
The EU has a mandate to regulate and improve the market conditions in Europe, but I don't see them making any headway outside. After all can you imagine any corporation voluntarily giving away profits?
We can only hope that some enlightened regulator is inspired to act on behalf of his own citizens thus making it possible for similar agreements. I don't have much hope for African markets, but perhaps in some Asian countries and Latin-America?
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The stupid thing about the charges that if you're on (say) O2 UK and go to Ireland and use O2 in Ireland - the same company! - you get hit with roaming charges. Or where one company owns another, for example Telefonica owned O2, but you would be hit with huge roaming charges to use the Telefonica network even though they owned O2.
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I agree that the prices are absurd. If the roaming charges are just 10-20% over the local charges it's no big deal for most users but now it's also a factor of operators doing large steps in charges so the minimum charge is per started megabyte of data and per started minute of a call. This is actually adding to the income of the telecom operators since calls seldom are close to a minute or a megabyte.
The customers are ripped off...
Sometimes, competition fixes it (Score:2)
Let me tell you the telecom success story of India.I have listed cents as USD cents
Back in the day(5-6 years or slightly more), call rates were around 10rs/min (20c/min) for outgoing and Long distance was even more. Some carriers charged for incoming too
Then came the first shakedown around 2003, when call rates dropped to 2rs/minute for all calls. and even on roaming.
In the recent shakedown, the latest fad is per second billing
So its 1p/second 100p = 1rs = 2cents
So basically you pay per second. It comes to
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Neelie Kroes is simultaneously the only Euro Commissioner that seems to be doing a consistently good job, and one of the few good VVDers that I regularly hear from (VVD the Dutch conservative liberal party; more conservative than liberal lately).
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I would caution against using free products to prove free market theories.
If you can show me one place on earth, ever in history, where a free market has resulted in a stable, prosperous society then we can talk. Until then, I want strong regulation and laws against anti-competitive behavior and strict rules against business consolidation.
Not that we'll ever get that, but that's what I want. I suppos
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Those didn't have such a "free market" if your skin happened to be black. And you can't really call a period stable when it ends with a bloody Civil War.
For whom were those years "quite good"? Women couldn't vote, blacks couldn't do anything at all in a lot of states, and crony capitalism was at its peak. The period you describe starts with a Civil War and ends with a Great Depression, so you really can't say it was such a "stable, prospero
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Please give me an example of anyone who's been jailed for not buying insurance.
Otherwise, don't waste my time.
"Governments" have done this? So every government is guilty of genocide?
Your trolling skills are off, comm64love. I know you can do better. You should bone up while you're between semesters there at the community college.
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It only works if the government and it's politicians aren't for sale.
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Not all countries require you to give out any information to get a sim card, and yet you don't get cheaper roaming in those countries...
"Over there!" (Score:2, Interesting)
European travelers who use their mobile phones abroad could soon see a dramatic reduction in their bills...
I thought the idea behind the creation of the EU was to eliminate the notion of "abroad"?
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It's not very nice to refer to Neelie Kroes as 'a broad'...
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That's what they're doing, but they're doing it (too) slowly. There will be no more notion of 'abroad' between EU countries phone contracts by 2015.
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The Schuman declaration (May 9, 1950) made it very clear that the goal was federation:
"The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe, and will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims."
Now, will this be like the US? Probably not, but it will be a country to some e
Re:"Over there!" (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no realistic way of collecting 30-ish countries, most with a distinct language and culture compared to the rest, as a single nation.
You mean like India?
Re:"Over there!" (Score:4, Interesting)
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And they still have roaming charges between their provinces.
It is "China Mobile" all over, but change the province, pay roaming.
There's a reason why most Chinese phones are dual SIM...
Next article, "Telco accused of assassination" (Score:2)
Of course, I went to the first open Starbucks, logged on and downloaded a cheap (though almos
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.
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Now, I'm force to ask. If she was less of a "bull dog", would it be a good idea to assassinate her? Don't get me wrong, I think it's a bad idea based on that fact too... but are there situations where assassinating someone is a good idea... or at least not a bad idea?
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Erm... OK... I had rashly assumed that by "put out a hit", you meant apply some sort of political pressure to have her removed from her (government appointed) role. If you are literally talking about assassinating her, you're way too crazy for me.
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I'm just scared that someone else will
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Well, I wouldn't assassinate her. Hell, if she pulls this off, she's my hero (especially if Norway adopts it as part of the EEC which often confuses itself with the EU when convenient).
I'm just scared that someone else will
I gathered as much from the tone of your posts. However, voicing such fears, in such wording --I mean, you CASUALLY evoke this possibility-- strikes me as utterly irresponsible.
Therefore, the parent's reference to your posts: "If you are literally talking about assassinating her, you're way too crazy for me." is apt. Posts such as yours, on a public forum such as this one, now, here, may well have an intimidating effect, however well intended they are, however unintended.
Go spend a weekend in a Zen dojo or
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Frog, I actually had to look at your earlier posts because after rereading your comment multiple times some things struck me.
1) You're complaining on Slashdot about people making "utterly irresponsible" comments and casually evoking the possibilities etc...
which struck me similar to once when I saw southern women in Georgia smack her child in the head for slapping his sister and saying "Don't do that, you'll go t
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I have always wondered why people are complaining about the commission being unelected, I cannot really see the issue here.
Firstly, some of us don't feel that having the administration of the day elected only indirectly as a result of who got the most MPs is a good idea either.
Secondly, the Commissioners are one step further removed.
Given that here in the UK our system for electing MPs is itself hardly democratic (it fails almost every common benchmark for a fair electoral system) you are talking about someone who wields a potentially very signficant amount of power, yet who is determined by something along the lines of an aver
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That might be the idea, and more so since Lisbon, but I suspect some wishful thinking is involved if you think everything always works like that in practice. It's a bit like arguing that separation of powers means the US President has little real influence on the legislative agenda of Congress.
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If your iphone was unlocked, you could have bought a prepaid simcard for 1GBP and put 10GBP of credit on it. Depending on the provider, 10GBP will buy you 1gb of data or so.
common good (Score:2)
The reality though is that 2015 is a loong way away, and by then these costs woudl have collapsed by nature.
Everybody would be walking aroud with an voip phone tapping into free bandwidth. This has already started with android 2.3 and SIP VoIP
G
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Not sure I follow, why would roaming charges collapse due to VOIP? I can't imagine corporations ever backing off extra money.
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Because with VoIP, you can swap out your SIM card for a local prepaid card with a data flat when abroad, and everyone can still reach you over your VoIP number.
I've been doing it for over a year now (frequent trips to the Netherlands & Belgium, as I live right on the border), and it works perfectly as long as I've got 3G access. EDGE or GPRS not so much, but hey, it's better than paying 10 for a 5 minute phone call.
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Except that VOIP is against most TOS'es, sometimes heavily blocked, usually sandvined.
Changing SIM cards is a workaround, but a crappy one. T-Mobile A, T-Mobile B and T-Mobile C could very well get together and abandon roaming charges between them. It is one network and they don't have any higher costs in doing so, they're just shafting their customers, hard.
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.)
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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.
In theory, you are right. However, de facto there are only some mobile phone operators which are active in (nearly) all European countries. If Orange UK charges an Orange France user huge roaming costs, this is just for screwing the customer. And, to make it worse, the SIM card of the Orange France user has the preinstalled "preference" to use the Orange UK network. The same goes for t-mobile and Vodafone users - and probably most the other mobile carriers.
While the EU regulation already put a cap on th
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Looking at the big operators in the UK -
Telefonica also has networks in Ireland, Isle of Man, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy and Spain
Everything Everywhere (Orange / T-Mobile) also has networks in Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Armenia, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Moldova, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Switzerland)
Vodafone also has networks in Albania, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Not
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The COSTS would have collapsed, but that's exactly the issue: for the telcos it just means their profit margins increase. Not one of them has passed on that saving to the end user unless forced, which carries a tiny suggestion of cartel formation instead of true competition..
Re:common good (Score:5, Interesting)
Roaming charges are so high because there is no competition in that field. None. You're dependent on your operator - you have no choice. They compete with each other on the local market, not on roaming charges, because - let's be real - some 90% of the telephone users doesn't even use roaming, save for maybe those two weeks vacation a year and then they'd just switch off the phone.
People that have most roaming charges are those that travel for business, and they often don't have to pay their own bills (so they don't care). And companies don't care enough because it's too important to have the phone work in the first place.
Competition (Score:2)
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Roaming charges are so high because there is no competition in that field. None. You're dependent on your operator - you have no choice. They compete with each other on the local market, not on roaming charges, because - let's be real - some 90% of the telephone users doesn't even use roaming, save for maybe those two weeks vacation a year and then they'd just switch off the phone.
I am still looking for a pan-European provider that offers a flat rate - or at least a constant minute price - for all phone calls regardless the (European) country, I happen to be. I know that there is a market. However, it is not since long that you would be allowed to create such a meta-provider (i.e. reselling only, without own network) in some countries and I am not sure that you are allowed in all countries (this was to make sure that providers actually build out a competing infrastructure; but the
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I am suprised that they would work for the common good, rather than the coorporate interest.
Some bits of the Commission are independent, some are in the pockets of big business.
The reality though is that 2015 is a loong way away, and by then these costs woudl have collapsed by nature.
No, they would still be there...the cellphone companies are making a killing on these charges.
Everybody would be walking aroud with an voip phone tapping into free bandwidth. This has already started with android 2.3 and SIP VoIP
Not an icicle's chance in hell. Wifi is nowhere near widespread enough for this, and still won't be in 2015. SIP is fine as a concept, but cannot take off until there is a unified directory that works. Right now it's just an interesting plaything.
There are still roaming charges? (Score:2)
I know it might be naive, but I assumed that purchasing "international service" meant you had service anywhere in the world just like in your home country. One of my friends spent a month in China over the summer, and I didn't hear him say anything about roaming charges, or anything out of the ordinary.
Similarly, I know that a lot of Canadians who frequent the US will purchase cellular service here, but I assumed that was just because of better service when they're here.
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.
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True, I'm from the US, but I recall reading not long ago about European phones using a different system (or maybe it was that particular carrier?) in various other parts of the world. With that in mind, buying a phone that has several band capabilities (CDMA, GSM, etc) and having to pay extra for the additional service seemed reasonable at the time.
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.
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Portugal and Spain will do it first (Score:3, Interesting)
Portugal and Spain are already in talks to end roaming charges between the two countries: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/technology/08roam.html [nytimes.com]
Data is included, but not clearly.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The paper includes questions about that last frontier of all rip-offs: data traffic.
The prices you pay for phone call roaming have indeed been affected by EU rules, but you now get ripped off over data - the cheapest resource to provide as the whole infrastructure has already moved to IP (that was one of the reasons 2.5G to 3G took so much time - the underlying security model had to be changed). This is partially visible in the VoIP and WiFi comments, so they're not ignorant of the issue - maybe I'm just too picky :-).
I cannot see the paper make a clear distinction between voice and data, but on the other hand, it's not that clear on packing the two together either so if you answer, make the distinction and address both separately.
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That the price for an SMS has doubled or tripled in the last 10 years while all other phone costs dropped dramatically means there's a huge market for that and people will bear these prices.
Frequent person-to-person communication by SMS is the one true hallmark of the true lower stratums of society. It's probably mall rats, chavs and other welfare zombies behind 90% of all SMS traffic.
Does this mean that you could (Score:2)
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I'd assume (not having read TFA) that you'd still have to pay international charges to call from, say, Spain to the UK, but you'd pay local charges to call a Spanish phone from your Spanish mobile while in the UK. So I'd say you could get a SIM via mail order from country A, but unless the bulk of your calls go to country A, you still won't save much.
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I'd assume (not having read TFA) that you'd still have to pay international charges to call from, say, Spain to the UK, but you'd pay local charges to call a Spanish phone from your Spanish mobile while in the UK.
I did read TFA and it is not clear, it seems to imply that there would be no international charges.
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While that would be fantastic, I doubt that will be the case. That would likely lead to the collapse of the whole industry... compare, for instance, the pricing in Germany and Austria - minutes cost 10cts (Germany) vs. 1cts (Austria) on average. Many operators would just go out of business with such an abrupt transition.
Of course, anything's possible, and I hope you're right :p
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I think it would be fair if, say, you're on a Spanish SIM and traveling in the UK, you pay the same rates as a holder of a UK phone would pay.
in 1999... (Score:2)
...I paid £50 for one of the latest (i.e. WAP, 3-band GSM etc.) Motorola Timeport 'phones, and for £12.50/month on a 12 month contract with BT Cellnet I got enough inclusive minutes to cover my light usage when not roaming. Data calls were GSM modem, i.e. slow, but this is 1999. Roaming charges were expensive, but I rarely needed to use my mobile abroad, making this is the cheapest mobile plan I've ever had.
All I've seen in the last decade is contract and call costs steadily increasing, while no
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In 2003 I took my UK GSM phone on a family trip to the Florida Keys. Before I left I asked about roaming data use abroad and Vodafone told me no problem, just use it like you would at home, no APN reconfiguration necessary and no extra charges. They were completely true to their word and although I ssh'd back to the UK quite frequently I never saw anything on my phone bill.
Of course this was probably before telco woke up to the money that could be made.
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All I've seen in the last decade is contract and call costs steadily increasing, while no data plans cater for the very light user who doesn't need to browse Facebook and watch porn on the move, just regularly send/receive e-mail on a mailbox which he's already run through a text filter to limit to a few kB at most.
Contract costs have increased becaus light users have gone to pre-pay. I rarely spend more than about £1/month with my phone, because most calls are incoming or made via SIP / WiFi. I've just moved from T-Mobile to giffgaff, so I pay 8p/minute for calls (cheaper than the rate for calling mobiles from my SIP provider, although more expensive than their rate for calling landlines) and 4p for texts (no line rental, but you can buy 'goody bags' which have a bundle of minutes and texts for a month), whic
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Map: like you said, store it on your 'phone. If I'm stuck in the middle of somewhere I don't know and around no-one, I also assume I may not get a quality mobile signal.
Public transport: not routinely, as I plan in advance, but this can be useful in the middle of the night if unexpected problems arise. A low bandwidth application.
Contact information: again rarely as I tend to plan in advance. Rarely enough that I can swallow a voice directory enquiry when it's not included in a plan. Again, a low bandwidth
competition was there at the very beginning (only) (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been on GSM in Europe since the very beginning, a professional traveller.
I perfectly remember roaming rates were widely variable according to the carrier you chose abroad, and soon there were ordered lists that you would enter in your phone to indicate careful preference for carrier X vs Y then Z, for each country. It was somehow painful to enter in the phone, but once only and cool after that.
Then, I *even more perfectly* remember, one day the news unanimously announced, in order to simplify customer experience, all european carriers had agreed onto a clearer and common rate.
Absolutely no one reacted. The rate of course was among the highest (at least, five or ten time higher than the lowest before).
No newspaper claimed this was an illegal arrangement, and neither did the Ms Kroes of the time.
Saying we discover it today is just a shame.
When it was done, it was fully in the open, and no one reacted.
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Saying we discover it today is just a shame.
When it was done, it was fully in the open, and no one reacted.
Thank you for mentioning this. This is historically significant.
However, from you own account, it hardly qualifies as having been done in the open. They ostensibly and hypocritically presented an act which turned out to be of collusion as a one of collaborative rationalization. At the time, I assume it would have been easy to greet the announcement as good news.
This might sound petty a point to make, but the nuance has legal, as well as public relations, ramifications.
Same companies.. (Score:2)
Many countries i visit have the exact same companies operating the mobile networks, and yet they still charge extortionate fees... If you were to buy the most expensive prepaid service in the country your visiting it would still be cheaper than roaming...
So given that the operator is clearly willing to offer service at such rates, it's purely a ripoff that roaming is so expensive. It's not like your getting anything extra, since while your roaming you clearly aren't using the service in your home country ei
I thought EU cellphones were so much better (Score:2)
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When I moved here from the USA, I had to wait a month before I could manage to jailbreak and unlock my AT&T iPhone. During that month, I used up 300 minutes and 200 text messages, with many of the minutes coming from random "blocked" calls I received on my phone that only lasted one minute, and many texts from text spam advertisers. The result? A 600 dollar phone bill.
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Being charged to accept calls is the norm in the USA. You will be charged to receive calls and messages either in monetary amounts or minutes deducted from your allocation.
It seems insane to use here in Europe.
Irony (Score:2)
pharmaceutical company .... greed reduction pill.
That seems ironic. Talk about not eating your own dogfood. :P