Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 359 posts

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#141

Post by diegoprzl »

Strom wrote: post #111
panzer_wyrm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uk three. Uk is the only sane (at least on this topic) country left in the EU in which you could buy a sim card without photo id.

This seems incorrect. I've traveled around in EU and haven't seen a single ID check for SIMs yet. Where is this happening? In my home country of Estonia we even have SIMs being given away for free on the streets as advertisement.

In Spain you need to provide your ID for a prepaid SIM.

They even requested your ID for SIMs you already owned and eventually disconnected all the unidentified.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#142

Post by vidarh »

samastur wrote: post #90
ptaipale wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a recent change? I hadn't heard of such. So, e.g. Telia doesn't have to pay any roaming charge to WIND Hellas if a Telia customer from Sweden goes to Greece and connects that network? Previously I heard a cap of 7 € per gigabyte for data fees was regulated.

Charge still is regulated to 7.7EUR per GB, but that is not its cost. Cost is indeed negligible as data is mostly transferred on exactly the same networks as the rest of Internet traffic in EU and nobody sane argues that you should pay 7 EUR for each GB you transfer. If I divide my monthly internet bill with the amount of data I transfer during it, then price of GB of data transfer is indeed close to nothing.

To add to that: I can buy wholesale bandwidth within Europe with some ease for But even the most price-gouging "captive audience" transit providers (e.g. in data centres without multiple choices of carriers) rarely charge more than ~$10/Mbps (depending on utilisation down to ~$40 per TB transferred or about 0.04 cents per GB...)

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#143

Post by rainingtomorrow »

imron wrote: post #136
HNBRN wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However the situation is much better now. It was very common for us French people to discover a huge roaming bill after a trip in another European country. At least roaming cost are becoming predictable

Yes, because it appears the Latvians are now subsidising your roaming charges.

And the French are subsidising Latvian agriculture, universities, roads, and infrastructure. I don't think it's fair to evaluate this policy isolated from the rest of EU policies.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#144

Post by walshemj »

gmac wrote: post #59
_miroz wrote: post #38

I'm wondering why the regulation was necessary and why the free market forces didn't bring the prices or roaming down? What are the forces in telecom industry that kept the prices so high (assuming that the prices were higher then necessary)?

Because it's a confusopoly[1] and roaming charges (like data overage charges) weren't part of the headline offer, which was generally UNLIMITED calls and texts and a FREE phone when you pay £X per month . Same as 'free' banking in the UK, which is in reality heavily cross-subsidised by the poorest customers paying overdraft penalties. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly

Should customers who don't go into the red subsides those that do then.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#145

Post by narag »

imron wrote: post #136
HNBRN wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However the situation is much better now. It was very common for us French people to discover a huge roaming bill after a trip in another European country. At least roaming cost are becoming predictable

Yes, because it appears the Latvians are now subsidising your roaming charges.

I guess you're not serious, are you?

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#146

Post by mamon »

andmarios wrote: post #102
_miroz wrote: post #38

I'm wondering why the regulation was necessary and why the free market forces didn't bring the prices or roaming down? What are the forces in telecom industry that kept the prices so high (assuming that the prices were higher then necessary)?

There is no free market. There can be only so many telcos in one country anyway, so instead of a race to the bottom, telcos of each country form cartels. In Greece for example, we have 3 mobile operators and they announce exactly the same changes to their plans within a couple weeks difference. Things like “we increase our basic plan by 5 euros” or “you have to top up your prepaid phone at least once every 3 months i…

In Poland it actually is a race to the bottom: there are 4 different mobile operators and every time one of them announce a new offer it usually is cheaper than anything already on the market. And within few weeks other 3 usually follow with similar price cuts.

EU's roaming regulation is the latest example: 3 operators announced tariffs that pretended to make roaming free, but have multiple strings attached. But the fourth one, Orange, announced offer without any fine print, just equating roaming prices with domestic ones, thus forcing other three to do the same.

If I recall correctly there wasn't a single price raise in Poland in the last 15 years.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#147

Post by [deleted] »

rhblake wrote: post #126
panzer_wyrm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uk three. Uk is the only sane (at least on this topic) country left in the EU in which you could buy a sim card without photo id.

French operator Free sells prepaid SIM cards through vending machines in many places. No ID check, totally automated, machine spits out a SIM of your chosen type along with a receipt with necessary info.

[deleted]

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#148

Post by kalleboo »

ptaipale wrote: post #27
glebm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roaming costs are price gouging, the associated costs of providing roaming are nowhere near.

However, now EU regulates the price to consumers to be lower than the wholesale price of roaming charges between operators. That is a failure. They should regulate the wholesale price. In practice: I pay 20 € per month for unlimited mobile data. If I go to Italy and use my subscription there, I still pay 20 € per month for unlimited mobile data, but my operator has to pay 7 € per gigabyte to the Italian roaming partn…

The unregulated gouging of northern European holidaymakers before this roaming regulation was probably a far bigger monetary transfer than the regulated costs.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#149

Post by vidarh »

datalink wrote: post #36
matteuan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessary true! There is a huge disparity between the cost of these services to the companies and the price for the users. This means that there is still space for regulation.

Thats not true in many cases. The wholesale price cap is 7.70€ /GB. This is the price telcos have to pay other telcos for their users roaming. And this is more expensive than end-user price in the nordics/baltic region.

And now the providers have strong incentives to look for the cheapest roaming options, or if necessary band together to overcome predatory pricing. There is no reason for these wholesale prices to be that high and they will continue to be forced lower. The EU Parliament pushed for it to be 4 Euro, declining to 1 Euro over a few years, for example.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#150

Post by marvel_boy »

pietroalbini wrote: post #77
_miroz wrote: post #38

I'm wondering why the regulation was necessary and why the free market forces didn't bring the prices or roaming down? What are the forces in telecom industry that kept the prices so high (assuming that the prices were higher then necessary)?

Because all the major operators (at least in Italy) really like cartels: if an operator increases the price of something, you can expect all the other ones to do exactly the same within a few months. An example of this is when all the operators changed the billing cycle from one month to 28 days, adding another monthly fee in practice: even if only one operator started doing that (with outrage from the customers), no…

Exactly the same in Spain.
Post reply on HN