
European roaming charges will end in 2014 - morganwilde
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/15/roaming-charges-die
======
netrus
This has huge psychological implications, similar to not carrying a passport
while crossing borders and paying with the same coins everywhere: All these
measures help to get the feeling that Europe is indeed one place, one
community. Weekend trips to other countries are not a privilege of the 1
percent over here, more like the top 30-50%. I love to see what is happening
right now, and I'm confident it will survive any current crisis. Maybe without
the UK, but continental Europe is sufficient great for me ;)

~~~
4ad
You need a passport (or other form of government issued-ID), you don't need a
visa.

~~~
darklajid
I guess the biggest change is: Nobody's checking it.

I travel without lining up in front of a police guy, showing my passport. A
border is sometimes easy to miss.

Took two girls from the US to the meeting point of DE, NL and BE after Fosdem
a couple years back. It's .. boring. Taking a picture there seems ..
worthless. Yes, more or less just a step away from each of these countries and
still - so what? No one cares, you can cross freely.

And boring is good for these things, in my book.

~~~
Someone
That isn't that different from 40 years ago. The Dutch-Belgian border has been
technically open since 1944 (the BeNeLux as a customs union dates from then;
see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benelux](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benelux).
In practice, the border will have opened a bit later, as World War II was
still going on)

The Dutch-German border was closed, but in practice, outside main roads, there
were only roaming border controls. The tripoint of Germany-Belgium-the
Netherlands lies on a hill without main roads, so one could cross the border
freely there even in the 1960's.

------
casca
This is still at the very high-level discussion stage. The key phrase:

"“They agreed that this time next year we will have got rid of these charges,”
a Brussels source said"

Also, it's not clear how this would be implemented. For example, Vodafone in
the UK lets you pay £3 a day and use your calls, texts and data from Europe.
Would that be acceptable? What happens to the smaller MVNOs who have been
responsible for driving down prices who now need to make a whole lot of
roaming agreements? Given that data is regularly more useful when roaming than
calls, will this directive require free data roaming too or is it excluded?

If I was a pan-European mobile operator, I'd have been lobbying for this. It
will cost them very little to provide the service, mostly some modifications
to their billing system. For those operators that only have national presence,
they'll need to start making alliances and integrate systems with other
operators in countries they're unfamiliar with in a different language.

Original article:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/telecoms/10119159/EU-
to-end-mobile-roaming-charges-next-year.html)

(Edited to make clearer why a pan-European operator would support this)

~~~
kintamanimatt
I'm under the impression that I would be able to use my plan from one country
in another without regard for whether I'm actually roaming or not, for no
extra cost. This would include data, and would be excellent for me (at the
moment at least) considering I have a cheap unlimited data plan.

I've seen it stated elsewhere that one of the ambitions of this plan is
increased competition across borders, for example, operators from, say, the UK
could compete with operators in the Netherlands.

~~~
mseebach
That is what they seem to be promising (and we all know that then politicians
promise something, that's how it's going to be). It's not clear how it will be
implemented, and it's not clear why a dutch provider should honor a commitment
for unlimited data that a UK provider has made to you.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Yes, and what happens if a provider in some small country sets up a limited
network for very cheap with the intention of the majority of it's users being
in different countries and thus other companies footing the bill.

~~~
claudius
If I understand this correctly, it is supposed to be free to the customer, not
the provider. So it is not about whether provider A pays provider B if A's
users roam in B's network, but whether A's users pay more _to_ _A_ while
roaming.

~~~
mseebach
I hope not - because then it means that roaming isn't made free, but rather
that giving you a good deal that only works on your home network - even if you
want it and never travel - becomes illegal.

This means that any business development that you can't agree with all of
Europe on isn't going to happen. One country with poor 3G/4G infrastructure
can block large, cheap data packages all over the EU.

No, I hope the regulation is that providers have to sell access wholesale to
foreign competitor at the same rate they sell it to themselves (or national
MNVOs or something) - meaning roaming won't be free, it just won't be more
expensive than getting a local SIM.

------
belorn
This will most likely not happen.

European Parliament member Christian Engström has written on the subject that
this decision is just one in a row of promised _proposals_ to lower/get rid of
roaming charges. He points out that each time an actual proposal has been
created, it has immediately been dropped by the same group. The current
proposal is intended to be created just at the time the current European
Commission's term will be up and next commission can "decide" on the matter.

[http://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/article16919673.ab](http://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/article16919673.ab)

~~~
alemhnan
I've actually a different experience so far. For example in 2009 they
flattened the price of sms [[http://www.telecoms.com/10693/europe-cuts-costs-
of-sms-data-...](http://www.telecoms.com/10693/europe-cuts-costs-of-sms-data-
roaming-charges/)].

------
marcosscriven
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Now, as a European citizen based on a little island called Great Britain, I
just hope our short sighted little-Englander politicians don't pull us out of
the European Union.

~~~
Bosence
I highly doubt they will, there's too much to lose. They're just bluffing hot
air to win over support from UKIP/BNP voters.

------
pbiggar
Unrelated, but it's interesting how they describe the European Commission as
being "a group of 27 politicians who represent the best interests of Europe as
a whole, rather than individual countries". I normally hear them described as
"a group of unelected bureaucrats". I guess perspective changes when they're
doing a good thing, instead of being complained about.

------
yread
The EU already severely regulate the market

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_roaming_reg...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_roaming_regulations#Prices)

In fact it was sometimes cheaper to call on roaming then to call for the
price-per-minute after you use up all your plan. Not to mention the data

~~~
gutnor
I don't know for the data, but I pay 8 times less (! 25p/min vs 3p/min) to
call a mobile in foreign country than another mobile locally in the UK and
only 2 times cheaper when making call in a foreign country.

I never really understood, that's just a pay as you go sim from a big player,
yet it is cheaper to call a Spanish mobile in Spain with my UK mobile than the
Pay as you Go rate from the same operator in Spain.

------
quattrofan
How can this happen? the Daily Mail tells me nothing good comes from
membership of the EU!!

~~~
marcosscriven
No doubt the 'Mail will be able to spin it in some convoluted manner to look
like another example of 'immigrants' stealing our jobs/money. No idea how, but
they will.

~~~
ovi256
Well, it's pretty simple. Consolidation of telcos will lead to less C-level
executive jobs, less Network Operation Center jobs, less network architecture
and planning jobs, so there you have it, this measure can only destroy jobs.

~~~
phillc73
I'm pretty sure the Daily Mail will gleefully inform us that as we're all
likely to use our mobile phones in Europe a lot more after this change takes
place, we'll all have cancer.

~~~
marcosscriven
OMG you're right, the immigrants gave us cancer too! Pesky immigrants.

~~~
saraid216
Dirty. Immigrants are supposed to be dirty.

------
marban
The article misses the fact that telcos are about to raise prices locally in
return.

Personally, I welcome this step since plans are cheap as hell in most
countries anyway compared to, say, the US.

~~~
netrus
Not sure about that, it has not happened after the last few price-limitations
that were issued in recent years. If mobile internet is 50-100x more expensive
beyond national borders I will simply not use it, it's a lose-lose deal (that
is hard for the market to escape from, due to the large fragmentation).

~~~
mmahemoff
The telcos make a small fortune every time a business traveller runs up
thousands of Euros/Pounds/etc (often at the expense of their employer's
shareholders). It's not surprising if the telcos increase everyone's fees a
bit if this money is no longer coming in.

And I'm fine with that. Overall, it means previously underutilised capacity
will finally be used. 99% of people were unable to use all mobile broadband
when abroad, despite it being cheap and abundant. Now they can.

~~~
mseebach
I read somewhere in some other coverage of this reform that the measures were
expected to drain about 2% from telcos' revenues. Even if they raise their
prices by 5% (which isn't given), that's (a) still a decent deal if you travel
ever (but unfair that non-travellers would end up subsidising travellers) (b)
quickly eaten up by the continuously falling prices of mobile plans.

~~~
tveita
"subsidising travellers"? If anything the travellers must be subsidising the
non-travellers now. A couple of megabytes of data do not cost hundreds of
dollars to move just because you have to route through one more network.

------
akavel
Sounds great as described here, but I do have some doubts as to this being
only good and awesome:

\- If this was done with current prices, then I imagine people would rush to
buy plans in the cheapest countries. Which sounds like big loss to telcoms.
So, will they raise prices? If yes, this means problems for people in those
cheap countries, who usually earn less too. Or will telcoms maybe lock-in
prepaids to your personal ID, to enforce pricing-per-country? But then,
anonymity is lost. So maybe, _maybe_ they might introduce both as options, so
you either pay more ("euroglobal price") for anonymity, or less and provide
your ID? Any other ideas, anyone?

\- "will mean greater competition, leading to alliances and eventual mergers"
\- I'm not economist, but isn't "greater competition" like exactly opposite to
"alliances and mergers"?

------
Luc
There's a hundred operators in Europe, whereas there's three or four in the US
and China. This fits in Neelie Kroes' plan to drive consolidation among
operators.

~~~
raphman
Have such plans been announced/alleged?

As far as I know, there are only a handful, multinational operators with own
cell tower infrastructure. The rest are more or less just resellers.

~~~
Luc
From a year ago: "M&A could help telcos close Europe's network gap: Kroes"

[http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-media-tech-
summi...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-media-tech-summit-kroes-
idUKBRE85A12A20120611)

------
bad_user
This is great, but I fear that the big winners will be the big telcos that
have a presence in multiple countries, like Vodafone or Orange. In my country
these two companies formed an oligopoly with similar services, similar prices,
similar everything, until Cosmote came along.

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davidw
I wonder if prices will be transparent enough and 'equalized' enough that you
might even be able to shop around for the cheapest country to get a number in.

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lettergram
I get the feeling that this will raise the prices significantly and likely
keep fragmentation (it's harder to compete when all companies have the same
possible pool).

------
jamesjguthrie
This is awesome! Agree with the others here saying that in the UK we kinda
feel like we're outsiders/special/loners but I think this is completely daft
and I'd love to have better integration with the mainland.

------
laacz
I know I'm late to the comment party, but my two eurocents.

In EU it's no longer an issue to talk or message abroad even when roaming.
Since last roaming cap was introduced voice and messaging has become
relatively cheap. What's most welcome about this (if it will go forward
becoming mandatory) is the possibility to get data abroad, which is VERY
expensive right now even with offerings from Europe-wide carriers.

------
Aardwolf
Awesome, because the times when I _especially_ need mobile internet is when in
other European countries!!

Currently the solution is to buy a local simcard.

------
Pxtl
I'm going to go ahead and assume that, once this is complete, you will be able
to go to one country and buy a phone, then use it to make a call from a second
country into a third... and probably still pay less than the average Canadian
local cellphone call.

------
Carwajalca
Some operators already offer flat rate packages for several countries. E.g. my
operator the Finnish-Swedish TeliaSonera offers me unlimited data, calls and
sms for Fennoscandia (fi, se, dk, no) and the Baltic countries.

------
CarlHoerberg
Nice, then maybe I can get rid of some of the ~20 SIM cards I'm carrying
around, and not having to research the mobile market for each new country I
happen to pass by..

------
return0
It's about time, the charges are exorbitant and clearly not justifiable.
Imagine if americans, had to pay roaming charges whenever they drive to a
different state.

------
tehwalrus
I've always hated roaming charges, especially within Europe. This is _WIN_.

------
Dj_Anthony2013
This is good news for me because my job entails traveling a lot mostly within
eu.

------
d2vid
Are international calling fees within the EU going away as well?

------
skion
This proves again that Neelie gets it.

------
oleganza
To make it clear: we all were paying roaming charges not because "evil
companies" arranged in a cartel, but because some politicians (who control
telecom licenses) were deciding prices and rules. Now they decided to drop
some requirements and we all fell warm and happy about it. Does anyone wonder,
wouldn't it be better if Brussels didn't have such power in the first place?

~~~
Atropos
You are either horribly misinformed or simply trolling. The reason MAXIMUM
roaming charges are set by Brussels is that the competition in the
telecommunications market EU wide is not working. The main reason for that is
a particular market structure: In most countries, landline telecommunication
service was provided by the government, and the operators only later being
privatized. The now private company could in a way free-ride on the original
investment made in the infrastructure by the government, which is why an
attack on the market by foreign companies is difficult. Furthermore the
telecommunications industry has very strong network effects, so that the
dominant natural provider could even be a sort of natural monopoly.

The licences for example for 3G/4G networks are mostly offered in a public
bidding contest in most EU countries, so the state intervention is quite
minimal. Unless you are suggesting government should have nothing to do with
it at all, and every operator should simply use any frequency he desires and
let's see what happens?

Please read
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_on_roaming_charges_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_on_roaming_charges_in_the_European_Union)
to see how bad the situation was before EU intervention!

