
Removing EU roaming charges is a big deal (2014) - user_235711
http://sveme.org/removing-eu-roaming-charges-is-a-big-deal.html
======
cameldrv
This article is from a year ago, and since then, the implementation of this
has been delayed until at least 2018 [1]. The good news is that the latest
drop (last year) of statutory roaming rates has made roaming within the EU
much cheaper if you shop around a bit, but we're sadly still far from the way
it is in the U.S. where you don't have to think about the fact that you're
1000 km away.

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-31737635](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31737635)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>where you don't have to think about the fact that you're 1000 km away.

We pay for that through increased rates due to covering such a huge landmass,
most of which is sparsely populated. Wyoming alone is larger than England and
has only 600,000 people.

I wonder if this roaming agreement is being pushed back because of the massive
costs it would incur. Your cheap Parisian data plan isn't going to cheap on a
Greek island. Its foolish to expect to pay the same rate. I can't see this not
raising rates.

~~~
vilmosi
The high rates in the US have nothing to do with area size, it's due to
monopolistic services, where you have 1 maybe 2 telcos to choose from in most
areas.

Free roaming in Europe has many problems to face, but infrastructure isn't one
of them.

~~~
adventured
That's not even remotely accurate.

Nearly the entire US population is now covered by AT&T _and_ Verizon. Most
major metros have four or five carriers to choose from.

Here, take a look at Sprint's coverage map:

[https://coverage.sprint.com/](https://coverage.sprint.com/)

T-Mobile has a 4G LTE network that covers ~80% of the US population and about
300 metro areas.

The fact is, _most_ Americans have at least four major carriers to choose
from, that offer competitive national plans.

The US wireless infrastructure has been far out in front of the European
wireless infrastructure in terms of development.

We had 97% 4G LTE coverage across 320 million people before Europe got to even
half coverage.

Further, the US system is accelerating in quality rather than slowing down,
thanks to intense competition between AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. I
don't see where the EU or Europe as a whole has anything like it.

~~~
paulsecwhatt
And yet you're still paying 4-5x the price for 4G, with ridiculously limited
data plans and excess charges.

------
JonCox
Top tip if you do a lot of 'roaming' (and are UK based), join the Three
network:
[http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home](http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home)

I've not quite figured out why more networks don't have deals like this in
place, as a customer it can take like 1 holiday to wipe out price differences
between network base prices.

~~~
flurdy
Does the Three "Feel at home" have any small print?

Is the data capped, or throttled? Is the coverage where the free roaming is
included limited?

It is tempting as it does seem to include the 3 countries I split my year
between (UK, Norway & Spain), but it is £2 to £4 more per month than my
current Giffgaff sim.

~~~
mintone
> If you have all-you-can-eat data you can use up to 25GB. If you have all-
> you-can-eat texts you can send up to 5,000 texts. If you have 3,000 or more
> minutes included in your allowance you can use up to 3,000 minutes.

It's not small print in as much as it's very clearly stated on their website.

I split my time between the UK and Italy, with some work in Hong Kong & the US
- therefore it's perfect for me. I don't run over and pay approx £30 a month
regardless of travel on a sim only, month by month plan. I do have one of
their old sims though which has unlimited everything.

The only point of note I guess is that the internet is a little slow in Italy
but then I'm also comparing that to my Italian 4G phone on Wind. Long story
short, it's an excellent deal which has played a major part in keeping me
retained as a customer.

~~~
cultureulterior
Do you tether/does your contract allow tethering?

~~~
loopbit
I have Three in Ireland with the same deal and yes, tethering is allowed.

~~~
ifmw
Three UK have infrastructure in place to DPI traffic to detect tethering and
if it's not enabled on your Three UK account plan then the tethered device
doesn't get internet access.

Three Ireland currently don't do this for Three Ireland accounts, though
tethering is prohibited on All You Can Eat by policy, not by network infra.

~~~
loopbit
As usual, the Three page is less than helpful... I don't know if it's my plan
(Classic Flex - Max), I can't get to the terms and conditions and I can't
check if tethering is enabled for my account

All I can say is that I've been to the UK and used my laptop with no issues
and that I'll try in Spain in a couple of months.

Anyway, you are much more informed than me in this area, so I'll shut up now
:)

------
joosters
Removing the roaming charges would be fantastic. At the moment, there are caps
on the roaming charges, which is a start. It's scary to see what they want to
charge without these caps. For instance, I recently traveled to Italy and then
Japan.

In Italy (capped): Calls 18p/minute, data 19p/MB

In Japan (unregulated): Calls 149p/minute, data 800p/MB

Data is over 40x as expensive ! The pricing that telecoms companies charge
when they can are obscene. (The capped 19p/MB is still vastly overpriced IMO
as well...)

~~~
saiya-jin
Living in Switzerland, which is tiny country surrounded by EU countries (CH is
not part of EU, its citizens had a public vote and decided cleverly to not
join), my crappy operator Lebara charges me when going to France (+- 2km from
my home or work) - 42 CHF (aka 40 euro) per single MB! Calls usually stick to
the range of 2-4 euro/min, incoming also charged. SMS cost 0.8 euro.

Pretty obvious I never used their data services abroad, but being offline when
traveling is actually a big plus for me.

(just to explain, it's one of very few pay-as-you-go operators @ Suisse, for
people like me who don't use their smartphones that much and have offline maps
for navigation)

~~~
vitobcn
In Switzerland, you can use Yallo (yallo.ch - they use the Sunrise network)
which has a flat package for 39 CHF/month allowing unlimited calls across both
CH+EU.

If you happen to be roaming abroad, they have data plans for 10 days / 100MB
for 15 CHF, which is not great, but way cheaper than the example you gave
above.

------
humanfromearth
I'm a customer of Free.fr in France and have been to Portugal and Romania
recently and had no roaming charges (though it was limited to 7 days and 3GB).
I don't know if this is something all operators do, but it was great.

I was able to use Google Maps and didn't have that 'roaming' feeling
associated with it. It was amazing!

~~~
Uberphallus
Another Free.fr, didn't know about that. Do you have any link?

~~~
ulysseb
Here is the link (in french):
[https://mobile.free.fr/assistance/677.html](https://mobile.free.fr/assistance/677.html)

And the limit is 35 days, not 7. I used this in Italy and it worked perfectly
well.

------
aspirin
In some cases this rule could be bad for customers, too. In Finland uncapped
4G data with monthly price is the norm, and if the carrier cannot charge extra
for data roaming in other EU countries, it can only lead to higher prices or
discontinuation of uncapped data. Carriers still have to pay each other
roaming fees after this rule is in place, right?

------
_mdb_
Yes it would be a big deal. But it is even a bigger deal/shame that the
telecom lobby was able to delay the decision.

Where do I need to sign the petition to push this through? (Or do I need to
create one)

~~~
markvdb
It might be more than just a delay. The new commissioner being more in bed
with industry lobbyists than the previous one for example...

------
jpalomaki
I'm currently paying flat 40€ monthly fee for my practically unlimited 4G (max
speed 100Mbits) subscription in Finland. 60€/month and I would get max
300Mbits. Obviously the top speeds are not available everywhere, but the in
average the speeds are quite good and network coverage is not an issue. We
currently have three operators. Two of them are completely local (Elisa, DNA)
and third one (TeliaSonera) is active in nordic and baltic countries.

In many other European countries it is difficult (or impossible?) to find
subscriptions with similar pricing. In quite many places there seems to be
quite low (few gigs) transfer limits and for extra data you need to pay extra.
Hard to see how the system could be setup so that the local operators could
continue charging their high fees and yet I would be able to roam on their
network without paying any extra.

The only way I can think of how we could complete get rid of roaming charges
would be drastic consolidation on the operator market. When traveling abroad I
wouldn't be roaming at all - I would be always on my home network.

Maybe the consolidation would be good on European level, but I'm a bit worried
that at least for me this would mean much higher prices for mobile data.
That's why my wish is that EU would just concentrate on lowering the roaming
charges to more acceptable level instead of trying to get rid of them
completely.

~~~
gdrherh
I'm a Swede living in Germany. Here in Germany, all telcos basically count
your download limit in MB's and you don't get many of them. Speeds feel like
2007, and only one company have 4G (last time I checked, maybe 1/2 years ago).

Seemingly a week after I top up my prepaid, I get a text (of course impossible
to get service in English or any other language by the way) about having used
up almost all of my lot. And I make sure not to use services that are video or
picture heavy.

I have nothing but bad experiences with German telcos - my girlfriend had to
fight customer service (hah!) for half a year before they finally let her end
her contract and agreed she was right. Same for me when I last left Germany.

If I could, I would throw out my German phone company this instant.

~~~
mgraupner
That there is only one 4G provider is certainly not true. Please check your
facts: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Term_Evolution#LTE-
Situat...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Term_Evolution#LTE-
Situation_verschiedener_L.C3.A4nder)

All 4 major players offer 4G, just not in every corner of Germany.

------
carlob
I've been recently moving back and forth between Italy and France and there is
one thing that bothers me with eurotariff: if I'm in Italy, a French friend is
visiting me, and I send them a text with my non-roaming Italian phone I pay
about 30 cents and this sum is not regulated anywhere. If I fish out my French
SIM card then that amount is capped to 7 cents. Funnily enough once I finish
my monthly allotment of SMS's, I can still message my Italian friends, from my
Italian phone at 10 cents per message, which is more expensive than what I'd
pay roaming and is not regulated.

So what I'm saying is that already today, without roaming charges being
abolished, using a foreign phone is generally cheaper than anything without a
plan in Italy, and I know that Italy is one of the cheapest countries in
Europe for non-monthly deals.

~~~
lmm
> I know that Italy is one of the cheapest countries in Europe for non-monthly
> deals.

Are you sure? How come your French phone is cheaper then?

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Italian phones were overpriced. A lot of
things are there, IME.

~~~
gutnor
Same thing in the UK - using my O2 pay as you go in Spain is cheaper than a
pay as you go in Spain for voice/sms, also using my UK phone in Spain for
voice/sms is cheaper than using it in the UK.

Mobile pricing is mental - completely detached from technological restriction
or infrastructure cost.

Also, some provider in EU ( as in France ) are making roaming free in most
Europe already. However, unlike what the article suggested, you need to live
in France to get them ( and remember the terrorists - you don't want to add
yourself to some government shit-list just to save a few euro on holidays )

------
coldcode
How does this affect a US user going to an EU country? I am going to the UK
and Germany in a month.

~~~
matwood
If you do a lot of traveling in the EU from the US, T-Mo is about the best
option short of buying a sim while in the EU. Unlimited texts, data[1] and
very cheap calls are awesome. I never think about my phone with traveling now
and just use it like I'm in the US. The only downside is there are some
countries in eastern EU not yet on the plan.

[1] The data isn't 4g, but for travel related items like TripAdvisor, maps,
etc... it has always worked fine for me.

------
MCRed
People never really seem to consider the unintended consequences of these
kinds of regulations.

You know, Apple and Google both were prescient and at different times (late
90s for Apple early 2000s for Google) they both attempted to obtain licenses
for unused spectrum from the FCC to create nation wide high speed wireless
data networks... for free. IT was supposed to be like WIFI, unregulated and
using spread spectrum, so there could be a free market in data for mobile
devices. Both companies tried, both companies had different approaches, but
both companies supported the other (well, apple supported google, not sure
google was around when Apple tried). And both efforts totally failed....
because there is no money in giving away spectrum. For the "Common good"
doesn't matter. The government makes billions from selling something it
doesn't own and politicians themselves make billions more from not changing
the situation once these large companies have bought their monopolies.

Taking just the consumer viewpoint "yay, free roaming!" is naive. As is just
assuming that the reason for roaming charges in the first place is to cheat
you.

Roaming charges are usually the consequence of higher costs for the network
you're visiting.

In the early days of the market in the USA, they weren't charges-- eg
additional fees-- so much as the fact that the "normal" price was a discount,
because your plan had negotiated with the individual carriers in a variety of
states to build up a network. (Remember the FCC's PCS auctions only allowed a
maximum of three entities to have a license in a given city. Thus if metroPCS,
swiftel and TexasComm got Austin licenses, then AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, in
order to EVEN OFFER SERVICE in Austin Texas would have to do deals with those
three companies. This greatly increased costs. Where they could play ball they
built a network of fixed prices... and where they couldn't, the "roaming
charges" were the additional fee that these people with their state granted
tri-opoly would charge AT&T customers when they were visting Austin. In order
to even have service.)

Thus these roaming charges are part of the governments exploitation of the
common good for profit. (wireless spectrum with spread spectrum technology is
nearly infinite. There could be a thousand carriers in Austin without
interference. IT's not like the old days of Radio and TV where you needed
exclusive "Channels." And spread spectrum technology was invented for WWII by
the actress Hedy Lamar, so it's not like it wasn't in use in the 1990s. No,
the government had a regulatory framework that was based on the pre-war era
and gave it the ability to sell out the public to the tune of many billions of
dollars. They also got to create major monopolies and have been reaping the
benefits (in campaign contributions) ever since. While we've suffered from
lack of competition.

Due to the monopolies the government has created there has been a great deal
of consolidation in the industry, the TexasComms and Swiftels of the past have
largely been bought by new entities like Verizon which were created-- at great
cost and at great acquisition premiums-- to consolidate this already
competition limited industry.

And because of the exclusive rights sold in those auctions new entrants cant
come aboard.

Consequently when you have a network like this, and you ban roaming charges
(Say they did the same here, I don't know what will happen in europe because
I'm less familiar with their history) ... the result will be either that
people's overall costs go up -- eg: The carrier just builds roaming charges
into the standard rate and pockets the difference when you're not roaming...
or they will start introducing technology "Differentiators" that are
technically different but whose impact is negligible. EG: "3's new LTE3! Only
available in the UK! sorry france, your towers haven't been upgraded."

This assumes there are higher costs for roaming in europe as there are in the
USA.

To consider economic moves like this you have to consider the landscape and
the consequences of making them. IT's not like there's free money.

It didn't have to be this way. The good guys-- Apple and Google both tried to
fix it. Other efforts have come since then, more profit oriented, but still
competition for the mobile data marketplace. They were also killed.

Mandating free roaming charges will only shift the costs... the root of the
problem is this artificial monopoly and that it is essentially corruption
designed to line politicians pockets.

~~~
Derbasti
> Taking just the consumer viewpoint "yay, free roaming!" is naive.

There is a very simple point to this legislature: It says that every operator
will have to sell it's network at a fixed wholesale rate to every other
operator. So none of your objections apply. Roaming _will_ be free, because
it's the law.

Plus, prices won't rise, since wholesale rates are fixed, and there will be
more competition. In other words, German Telekom will have to compete with
Finland for price, and thus can't afford to raise it's prices for fear of
losing customers to Finland.

> The good guys--Apple and Google

hardly.

