
EU sets timeline for single telecom market - crayola
http://euobserver.com/economic/120149
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k-mcgrady
I really liked this until I read this sentence:

>> "Europe has 1,200 fixed operators and over a hundred mobile operators. The
US has six mobile operators and China has three."

Prices and competition in the US are abysmal compared with most EU countries.
The goal should be to reduce the number of duplicate operators (O2 +
Telefonica), not get down to a small number of carriers with little
competition.

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nakedrobot2
The shameless and outrageous sodomy of the consumer by every telco in every EU
country (especially when roaming) and the vested interest of continuing to
sodomize consumers in this way makes me highly doubt that any of these
companies have any interest at all in creating a "single telco" market as
described in this article.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
> The shameless and outrageous sodomy of the consumer by every telco in every
> EU country

Speak for your country. I'm pretty happy with the competition in Finland.

~~~
vetinari
When I'm at home, I'm also pretty happy with both voice and data package.

However, I'm not at home right now and the roaming charges are outrageous.
Forget about data (25 MB for 2 EUR?) and the voice also isn't something to
write home about.

Btw, UK HNers: could someone of you recommend data SIM of about half a gig,
but one that is valid for one week and then I can forget about it? The
operators I tried to ask were not happy to offer something non-recurring.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Take a look at these: <http://www.o2.co.uk/tariffs/payandgo> £20 will get you
250 mins, 2500 texts, 500MB data.

The number won't disappear after a week but you're not locked in to a
contract, it looks like a standard PAYG sim.

~~~
vetinari
O2, while it is prepaid, has monthly pricing structure. It is not quite
standard pay&go sim (they have the exact pricing structure in my home country.
It is good plan, but not for visitors).

Anyway, thank you.

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stephengillie
Are telecoms which operate in one country (i.e. Germany) unable to operate in
neighboring countries (i.e. France)?

~~~
mtgx
There are some big ones like Vodafone, Orange, OTE, T-mobile, Telefonica,
which operate in multiple countries, but I think even if you use Orange in one
country, and go visit another country with Orange, you still pay for roaming,
so I guess they are seen as different entities in each country and she wants
the groups to be seen as single entities.

Hopefully this won't slow down competition like in US, and allow for price
fixing.

~~~
claudius
Europe is populated far more densely than the US and there is plenty of
competition in individual markets (e.g. Germany), so I doubt that this will
slow down competition.

What I really hope it will achieve is abolishment of roaming in any particular
form – I have a German contract with German O2, currently stay in the UK and
am usually logged in(?) to O2 UK’s network. Yet this is ‘roaming’ and forces
me to pay more for calls, while paying less for texts (€0.1 per text by EU
regulation rather than unregulated €0.19 at home).

~~~
masklinn
> What I really hope it will achieve is abolishment of roaming in any
> particular form

I'd also like cross-EU number portability, I moved country a few years ago and
had to change my mobile phone number, that was annoying.

~~~
claudius
If there wasn’t any roaming, you could simply keep your old contract?

~~~
masklinn
Yes, but there may also be some sort of local operator with more interesting
prices or offers.

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Alf_InPogForm
Don't the telecoms companies make huge profits on roaming fees? Would this
then mean that the companies would be pushing against this move?

~~~
DannyBee
I think you are confused ;)

They'll continue to charge roaming fees anyway, right up until they lose a
lawsuit over it. Why would they do anything else?

~~~
icebraining
Why would they lose a lawsuit over it?

~~~
antr
Because that company which is operating a network across several EU countries
(which is one market) is, among other things, discriminating against users
based on their location in the EU.

Remember that the EU was "born" with the main objective of creating a "single
market" through the standardisation of laws across all member states.

~~~
icebraining
Well, yes, if it's the same company across the different countries, but
supposedly there will still be a lot of carriers that only serve a country or
two, so roaming will still be common, no?

~~~
antr
Essentially roaming disappears for everybody within the EU. Either because (i)
if you are a large telco and your network has merged with other ones; (ii) if
you are a small MVNO your network agreement subrogates to the new merged
network.

Still, there is some lobby going on in the EU which wants to detach operators
from the network, and make the network independent from everybody. NetCo +
OpCo != TelCo.

I really hope this last scenario happens. But it's a bit of a utopia.

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freehunter
>“If one individual would like to watch high-definition films of what one
petabyte means, it would take 13 years non-stop,” he added.

I'm not sure what this means.

~~~
jwoah12
Perhaps that 13 years of HD video data can fit in a petabyte?

~~~
masklinn
Yes, it seems to be a very confused way of saying "watching a petabyte of HD
video", and completely fails at giving a sense of scale for a petabyte.

~~~
jwoah12
I actually think it does a good job at giving a sense of scale for a petabyte
in terms of video hours. "13 years of HD video" does a lot more for me than "1
million gigabytes," which was basically my frame of reference before. However
that's only if you can actually interpret what it's trying to say.

~~~
freehunter
Yeah my trouble was that they referenced "how much is a petabyte" and "videos
nonstop for 13 years" but failed to say "one petabyte of videos related to how
big one petabyte is would take 13 years to watch".

I think that explanation makes more sense.

