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 ;)
As you allude; unless you live in the UK where the media shove it down our throats that we're special and don't need that level of co-operation, integration and instead should leave the EU (and presumably be a de-facto additional US state).
For those of us in the UK that do visit Europe or wish to speak to people in Europe with Google Hangout, Skype etc. this is excellent news, as it presumably is for all Europeans.
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.
> "If I was a pan-European mobile operator, I'd have been lobbying for this."
Do you mean lobbying against this? If I were a pan-european operator, then I'm making 'free' money from my customers that travel across Europe with negligible increase in costs. Scrapping roaming charges means that advantage goes away. Indeed, the article you link to has the following:
"The plans set up a clash between Brussels and telecoms bosses such as Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao, who in February called for a 'moratorium on regulation' in telecoms. He said industry had been a target for too long and it threatened employment. Neelie Kroes, the Commisisoner behind the reforms, told Mr Colao she would 'call your bluff'"
Other than that, your questions are interesting. I'm on an MVNO (GiffGaff), which uses the O2 network. It'd be great if deals that the parent networks make are simply passed onto the MVNOs but we'll have to see.
Yeah, I'd be interested in how this would be implemented as well. I'm guessing it's not as simple as "ending roaming charges" as that would be quite easy to game - setup a single-mast cell phone provider in the middle of a Finnish forest, and demand that all other providers carry your clients traffic for free. Clearly, the network in which another networks' clients are roaming must be compensated somehow, it's just that the price will be capped at some level.
> 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.
I suspect it's more complicated than this, or they'd be more integrated already. My operator, Hutchinson Three (3) used to let their users roam in all the other worldwide 3 networks at no cost (UK, Sweden, Italy, Austria, Hong Kong, Australia, etc) called 3LikeHome, but they eventually terminated it, claiming that due to their package roaming agreements (I've had it explained to me that most operators buy a roaming agreement bundle from a consolidator instead of negotiating one by one themselves), they couldn't limit their service in those countries to only roam on 3, and customers would continually roam onto other networks and rack up huge bills thinking they were connected to 3.
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.
I'm from the UK and have just spent a long weekend in Barcelona and made use of the Vodafone £3 deal and I have to say it made a massive (positive) difference to the experience, much greater than I thought it would.
This is compared to previous Euro trips where I feel like I've lost half my brain and even just snicking data on and off for little databursts lands you with £40 / day bills.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
That's true. I believe providers exchange significant amounts of money from multilateral roaming agreements, and all that potential profit has to come from somewhere else.
What I'd like to see are providers charging a low fee for travellers to use their networks. Local users will subsidise travellers less in this case.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
[+] [-] netrus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ed_blackburn|12 years ago|reply
For those of us in the UK that do visit Europe or wish to speak to people in Europe with Google Hangout, Skype etc. this is excellent news, as it presumably is for all Europeans.
[+] [-] morganwilde|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4ad|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] casca|12 years ago|reply
"“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...
(Edited to make clearer why a pan-European operator would support this)
[+] [-] amirmc|12 years ago|reply
Do you mean lobbying against this? If I were a pan-european operator, then I'm making 'free' money from my customers that travel across Europe with negligible increase in costs. Scrapping roaming charges means that advantage goes away. Indeed, the article you link to has the following:
"The plans set up a clash between Brussels and telecoms bosses such as Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao, who in February called for a 'moratorium on regulation' in telecoms. He said industry had been a target for too long and it threatened employment. Neelie Kroes, the Commisisoner behind the reforms, told Mr Colao she would 'call your bluff'"
Other than that, your questions are interesting. I'm on an MVNO (GiffGaff), which uses the O2 network. It'd be great if deals that the parent networks make are simply passed onto the MVNOs but we'll have to see.
[+] [-] mseebach|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalleboo|12 years ago|reply
I suspect it's more complicated than this, or they'd be more integrated already. My operator, Hutchinson Three (3) used to let their users roam in all the other worldwide 3 networks at no cost (UK, Sweden, Italy, Austria, Hong Kong, Australia, etc) called 3LikeHome, but they eventually terminated it, claiming that due to their package roaming agreements (I've had it explained to me that most operators buy a roaming agreement bundle from a consolidator instead of negotiating one by one themselves), they couldn't limit their service in those countries to only roam on 3, and customers would continually roam onto other networks and rack up huge bills thinking they were connected to 3.
[+] [-] kintamanimatt|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] geden|12 years ago|reply
This is compared to previous Euro trips where I feel like I've lost half my brain and even just snicking data on and off for little databursts lands you with £40 / day bills.
[+] [-] belorn|12 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] alemhnan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcosscriven|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbiggar|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yread|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_roaming_reg...
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|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcosscriven|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marban|12 years ago|reply
Personally, I welcome this step since plans are cheap as hell in most countries anyway compared to, say, the US.
[+] [-] netrus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ValentineC|12 years ago|reply
What I'd like to see are providers charging a low fee for travellers to use their networks. Local users will subsidise travellers less in this case.
[+] [-] icebraining|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akavel|12 years ago|reply
- 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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raphman|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bad_user|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lettergram|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesjguthrie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laacz|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
Currently the solution is to buy a local simcard.
[+] [-] Pxtl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Carwajalca|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CarlHoerberg|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|12 years ago|reply