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Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

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Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#301

Post by Markoff »

this is all nice and dandy but it's still only half job, since this doesn't mean there are no charges for international calls

so yes receiving calls or using internet will be same as home, you still have to watch what number you are calling, if it's from country of your carrier or different

please correct me if I am wrong

EDIT: so I was right, now it's even more insane than before:

For example: If you have a Belgian card and you travel to France and call either a hotel in France, back home to Belgium, or to any other country in the EU and the EEA, you are roaming (refer to legal text on the regulation on roaming) , and you will pay Belgian internal domestic prices (refer to legal text).

However, if a Belgian SIM card holder calls from Belgium to Spain, she/he will pay the international tariff. Calls from home to another EU country are not roaming and are not regulated.

source: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/faq/frequently...

TLDR: there are no fees for international calls while you are in roaming, but when you return back home enjoy fees for international calls, using your SIM in foreign network is cheaper than using it in your own network at home

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#302

Post by dheera »

acchow wrote: post #296
dheera wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I now use Google Fi (free roaming in 150 countries) but that didn't use to exist. When I was doing an internship in Switzerland about 9 years ago I often travelled to nearby countries on weekends and internet access was always a problem. Free Wi-Fi was largely nonexistent back then, and roaming charges were upwards of USD15 per megabyte (yes, mega ). Simply trying to use Google Maps to get to a hostel might c…

> Why didn't Orange UK, Orange France, Orange Switzerland, Orange Egypt, Orange Romania, etc. work together to give free calls and free internet access on each others' networks Because they made boatloads of profit from charging their customers for roaming.

Sure, but they could instead sweep all the customers away from their competition since the same parent company has a foot in multiple countries. They could have even undercut business from Skype by offering almost-free roaming.

Also, if roaming charges are prohibitively expensive, people just stop using roaming. If they are at least reasonable, they will profit significantly more because people will actually use it. At $15/MB I just shut my phone off. They're not making any money from me.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#303

Post by krzyk »

patrickk wrote: post #276
mamon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roaming is relatively niche, but very expensive product, compared to other telecommunication services, so in my opinion it was fair to charge additional fee for that. Now that EU regulation is in place mobile operators are no longer allowed to charge the additional cost to people actually using roaming, they have to spread it across all their customers. So, net effect will be: poor people who do not use roaming (e.g.…

> So, net effect will be: poor people who do not use roaming (e.g. because they cannot afford vacations abroad) will pay for the convenience of middle and higher class people who travel a lot. You'd have to be fairly destitute to not be able to afford to travel within Europe[1]. For example, even people on social welfare in the UK and Ireland can afford cheap sun holidays to Spain or wherever. [1] https://www.ryanair…

British social welfare is considered (sorry, no source) one of the top in Europe (Swedish is probably higher).

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#304

Post by ptaipale »

samastur wrote: post #258
ptaipale wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a cost to my operator, and it is a cost the the EU has explicitly approved.

It would be if it was one way only. In practice users from all telcos roam on other networks, negating large bits of this exchange. Real price per user is much lower.

The roaming is far from symmetric.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#305

Post by nercury »

vmarsy wrote: post #265
rainingtomorrow wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latvia and Lithuania have literally the cheapest telco services in Europe. It's no surprise that we have to pay a bit more now. Yes, we lose this time, but for the rest of the Europe it's a huge win.

How much is it exactly? I thought you can't beat Free's prices in France with 2€/mo for 1h phone and unlimited text, and 20€/mo for everything unlimited : phone/text/4G. Since they showed up all other telcos in France had to adjust and offer around the same, around 25€ max instead of the usual 60€ to 80€ they'd offer before Free.

It was costing less, now it is a bit more than you say. I think this law forced cheaper operators to make deals with all the other country operators, no one was going to decrease prices, so in the end we got the maxed out price.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#306

Post by NaliSauce »

endijs wrote: post #63

This idea was good. But in reality what happened in Latvia was very simple and expected move by telcos - all three of them raised prices for all subscriptions by about 3€-4€ monthly (which is ~30% increase). Yes, now you can feel better while traveling, however everyone now pays extra every single month. For some situation now is better, while others pay for it even if they do not need such freedom. Those who are in…

>Those who are in first category are happy, others not so much.

Here's a thought: the people in society with the lowest income have to pay for this just like everyone else, yet they are the ones least likely to benefit from it.

It is unfortunately a pattern that you'll find widespread in what the EU does. It benefits the the people with already higher income in the member countries way more than those with a low income. Sometimes it even makes the bottom of society subsidize those with higher incomes than they have - as is the case here.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#307

Post by jsf666 »

czr80 wrote: post #175
endijs wrote: post #63

This idea was good. But in reality what happened in Latvia was very simple and expected move by telcos - all three of them raised prices for all subscriptions by about 3€-4€ monthly (which is ~30% increase). Yes, now you can feel better while traveling, however everyone now pays extra every single month. For some situation now is better, while others pay for it even if they do not need such freedom. Those who are in…

This doesn't really make sense - what was stopping them from raising prices before, if people are really willing to pay 3-4 EUR more?

Prices (and margins) of telco in e.g. Poland are very low, but the costs the telcos pay to foreign telcos for roaming are pretty high. There's a lot of Poles working outside of Poland, etc. and someone will have to pay up for this. So as always with socialism a small group will take benefit (including western companies like T-Mobile and Orange) while we stop having cheap services to pay for it.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#308

Post by jsf666 »

john61 wrote: post #241
endijs wrote: post #63

This idea was good. But in reality what happened in Latvia was very simple and expected move by telcos - all three of them raised prices for all subscriptions by about 3€-4€ monthly (which is ~30% increase). Yes, now you can feel better while traveling, however everyone now pays extra every single month. For some situation now is better, while others pay for it even if they do not need such freedom. Those who are in…

The idea was not to lower prices, but to align mobile pricing to basic EU freedoms: * Free movement of persons * Freedom to establish and provide services

So why the EU (mainly the ones who control it - France and Germany) are pushing for minimum wage for truck drivers? It's clearly a move to stifle EE competition, so it seems the things you wrote are just empty words when it comes to business

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#309

Post by devcpp »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #203
endijs wrote: post #63

This idea was good. But in reality what happened in Latvia was very simple and expected move by telcos - all three of them raised prices for all subscriptions by about 3€-4€ monthly (which is ~30% increase). Yes, now you can feel better while traveling, however everyone now pays extra every single month. For some situation now is better, while others pay for it even if they do not need such freedom. Those who are in…

That kind of thing used to happen in Israel too. Every time the government introduced a new regulation aiming to reduce mobile costs, the three companies would respond by simultaneously raising prices. And then the government used the nuclear option--They licensed two new mobile operators. And the prices plummeted.

More importantly, they forced the old operators to play nice: they can't try too hard to retain customers, they can't lower their prices too much, etc. Absolute control is a strong component of Israeli regulation (transports, broadband, cellular, gas...)
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