
An end to ‘bill shock’ as EU mobile roaming charges are slashed - YeGoblynQueenne
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/apr/30/end-bill-shock-eu-mobile-roaming-charges-slashed-phone
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carlob
The problem right now is: if I am in Italy and I send an SMS to a French phone
(regardless of where it actually is) I spend 30 cents as this is not regulated
in any way by the roaming laws. On the other hand if I'm roaming and I send an
SMS to any cell phone in Europe I pay 7 cents.

This means that most of the time if you have someone visiting you there is a
huge asymmetry in prices when corresponding, the only problem is: I don't know
how they're ever going to address this.

~~~
kuschku
Actually, that shouldn’t be possible.

The EU limited cross-national SMS to 10ct per SMS, and 10ct per minute of
phone calls, too.

~~~
germanier
Are you sure? I have never heard that nor could I find anything in the roaming
regulation. I just checked a few (German) mobile providers and all charge more
than you suggest.

~~~
kuschku
I know ALDI Talk changed theirs down with the justification that "the EU
roaming regulations also apply to calling from your home country to another
country".

~~~
germanier
Telekom still charges up to a euro per minute and the price list was updated
last week:
[http://www.telekom.de/dlp/agb/pdf/43777.pdf](http://www.telekom.de/dlp/agb/pdf/43777.pdf)
I know why I'm not a customer there...

~~~
kuschku
Wow, that’s impressive. There’s another good reason not to use T-Mobile.

Aldi Talk costs only 0,12€ to US, Canada, Mexico, and only 0,11€ to EU (same
as nationally).

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mrweasel
I wouldn't call it "an end", €0.05 extra per MB of data is still very very
expensive. It seems like a low number, but people forget it's per MB. Going
out, claiming an end to "bill stock", could mean that people will forget that
maybe the kids shouldn't be watching Netflix during the holiday, unless
they're on WIFI. You still need to disable mobile data when traveling around
the EU, because it's not going to be as cheap as using it at home, far from
it.

~~~
Havoc
Quite - but you selected a bit of an edge case @ netflix.

This will go along way in preventing people getting slaughtered because
Windows decided to quietly do a 300mb update. 15 Euro...big deal. Hell there
are country/carrier combinations where that will cost you ~10k EUR (admittedly
non-EU...don't know what the highest EU combo is).

Most people just want to check their mails and browse facebook without having
to re-mortgage their house.

~~~
unculture
Netflix on holiday is a number one use case for me.

~~~
lorenzhs
I don't want to sound smug or anything, but why go abroad to watch Netflix?

~~~
Havoc
Well I had a 7 hour stop over on a foreign airport today (LGW) so its not
impossible.

But as I said - edge case and very much something that most people would think
through carefully in terms of connectivity. e.g. I knew today I can push maybe
250mb before my 3G bombed out. So I browsed instead of netflixed.

~~~
lorenzhs
Ah yes, airport stopovers are a good point. Maybe also business travel to
"boring" places.

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aaron695
Soooo since hn has a strong libertarian streak, what's the downside?

Certainly forcing the standization of chargers seemed to make life easier
across the world.

~~~
comboy
Sometimes such regulations are good, sometimes they're not. If some company
makes a bad decision then it hurts that company and gives advantage to other
companies. If regulator makes a bad decision, there is no escape from it and
there are completely no consequences for him.

Often it's even hard to tell if something is going to turn out to be a good
decision or bad. So even ignoring potential corruption or incompetence and
assuming best intentions, it's still seems better to me not to depend on a
single entity.

> Certainly forcing the standization of chargers

Nobody forced anybody. There was no EU regulation that all phones must use
such and such charger. Companies were simply optimizing for profit and that
decision aligned with it.

~~~
wycx
Whilst compliance with the European Initiative [1] is voluntary, I find it
hard to believe that without the EU proposing the Initiative (presumably with
an implied threat of a non-voluntary initiative), that phone manufacturers
would all have magically chosen to optimise profit by employing standard micro
USB.

I vividly recall the days of smartphones with custom variants of usb cables.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply)

~~~
comboy
Sorry, I wasn't awary of this Initiative. I still would say that it is in best
manufacturers interest and they would switch, just like now they are switching
to USB-C, but maybe I am wrong after all.

~~~
stuaxo
It was the wild west of cables.

Samsung / LG etc were the worst with cables you couldn't even use with
different models.

Nokia + Sony were the best as theirs worked for all their respective phones +
later nokia switched to USB micro. The standards change made everything so
much better!

------
Havoc
Great news. I've switched between 4 different SIM cards in the last week to
get decent data costs in the various countries.

Seems rather unnecessary.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Aw, they switched from fixed maximum tariffs, to maximum surcharges. This
means that now it'll actually be more expensive to use my phone abroad.
Currently, the maximum tariffs are lower than the rates charged at home, for
me.

~~~
germanier
The previous cap still applies in cases like yours.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Oh, alright then.

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Havoc
I wonder how this will cover "unlimited" data plans. e.g. The German SIM I've
got switches to a throttled speed after the data bundle is exhausted. (Pretty
damn slow, but somewhat usable - and weirdly FB voice calls seemed fine).

~~~
germanier
From mid-2017 those unlimited plans need to carry over while roaming without
surcharge. They can however switch off the connection after you reached a (yet
to be defined) limit to stop perpetual roamers, i.e. those buying SIM cards
from countries other than their residence.

~~~
Havoc
>(yet to be defined) limit to stop perpetual roamers, i.e. those buying SIM
cards from countries other than their residence.

I'm tempted to say they should allow perpetual roamers.

That throttled plan I mentioned is sufficiently slow that nobody sane will
actually use it long term. Only tourists will use it (google maps & lost) and
people utterly desperate for communication. Now if you think about Norway etc
introducing broadband internet as a human right then I think we can throw
people a bone and give free 384kbps free (thats roughly what it felt like -
baring the freakish FB voice working).

384kbps is really at a point where one can say fk it the community will take
the financial hit for the greater good. If everyone is guaranteed the ability
to send whatsapp/telegram/fb messengers to loved ones & friends that'll save
us all a good amount of grief.

For context: It still connects at HSDPA/LTE speeds @ physical link but the
throughput is 384kbps - picking that number because I used to be on 384 DSL as
a reference point...not because I measured it.

~~~
gst
For international travel I use a Project Fi SIM card that provides data
roaming at 256kbps. While web sites load slightly slower, I'm otherwise
perfectly happy with 256kbps roaming.

------
kyriakos
So if I have free data available with my monthly plan say 1gb, and I travel to
another eu country do I still use my free mb + .05eu per MB or my providers
rate for over my data allowance + the .05 ?

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Geojim
amen - but is there any hope for the rest of the world?

I'd love to throw out my santa sack of international sim cards. Maybe I should
stop whingeing and just buy some telco shares. Can't beat 'em-

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jhoechtl
I said it a thousand times. Joe average, who doesn't work remote and saves
money for his two week holidays in Italy, will pay for the creme de ka creme
hipsters jetting around Europe pretending they are in Silicon Valey.

------
dingaling
This is one of the few areas of customer-protection where I disagree with the
EU.

If mobile carriers are colluding to set unreasonable roaming charges then
prosecute that as a cartel. But the EU has no business establishing actual
call and data charges.

As a result of their intervention they indirectly increase domestic mobile
rates for all the people who aren't roaming. The mobile firms can just
increase domestic rates to compensate for lower roaming revenues.

~~~
fit2rule
As someone who lives and travels in the EU and has had more than enough of
this bill shock, I'm all for this regulation - it was clear that the arbitrary
border charges were being used (in the smaller EU states) as a way to gouge
customers.

If the mobile providers continue to gouge customers by just transferring the
costs to domestic billing, then that is something that the EU should _also_
address, and as a subject of EU regulations in this regard, I'm all for it.

~~~
masklinn
> If the mobile providers continue to gouge customers by just transferring the
> costs to domestic billing, then that is something that the EU should also
> address

I doubt that'll be necessary, "local" prices are something users can and do
check when comparing offers. The roaming issue comes from roaming info usually
being small footnotes, most consumers not thinking about the subject (and not
considering they'd need it) and needs changing, most people didn't really need
data roaming a few years ago, things are markedly different with the "always
connected" smartphones.

Basically, roaming prices were a place where MSPs could safely gouge a small
fraction of consumers (and make them feel bad for it) without much risk of
building up a big protest movement. Most of them apparently didn't see or
refused to act on the winds changing, and thus the EU hammer coming down on
the practice.

~~~
dingaling
> The roaming issue comes from roaming info usually being small footnotes,
> most consumers not thinking about the subject (and not considering they'd
> need it )

Then the EU should set standards for roaming advertising and contracts, not
dictate the price.

I can't think of any other domain of business where a Western national or
supra-national government set privte-sector prices because customers can't be
trusted to read T&Cs.

Car rental contracts often have horrific small-print penalties for crossing
intra-European state boundaries, but I don't see the EU intervening there.

~~~
fit2rule
>I can't think of any other domain of business where a Western national or
supra-national government set privte-sector prices because customers can't be
trusted to read T&Cs.

Example: California, fixing prices of electricity within the state. (not a
good example, but one you should probably be aware of as it supports your
argument while also giving you a clue that its not just the naughty euro-
socialists doing these sorts of things..)

Anyway the EU are not setting prices because customers don't read T&C's.
They're setting prices because their citizens get royally screwed by price
gouging, whether they read the T&C or not, and its a serious economic issue in
a region where cross-border travel is significantly higher than in any other
part of the world.

Its one thing to assume that the EU is exerting some sort of fascist power
over the free market and ruining it. Its another thing entirely when the EU
actually does its job and protects the subjects of its member states from
predatory business practices... but I guess this is an economics argument
about the free market and capitalism, which I fear is not one you and I are
about to form consensus. I'm quite happy for the telecom's to be getting their
comeuppance in this market - the gouging is really, really heinous. For those
of us who have to live here and work within the EU framework, this is exactly
the sort of thing the EU is good for...

