Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#311

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #302

acchow wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They didn't need you. Their real customers back at the time were businessmen with next-to-unlimited travel funds.

These days it has changed because especially young people demand being able to Instagram/Snapchat their travels from anywhere... but still data in Germany is horribly expensive.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#312

Post by vidarh » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 7:07 PM UTC

dx034 wrote: post #226

ptaipale wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then have the roaming charge regulated to 7€ per terabyte, instead of 7€ per gigabyte as now.

That's below the price you pay for data transfer from a server at AWS.. I agree that €7/GB is probably too high, but will still be higher than for internet via cable.

AWS is a notoriously bad example as they're one of the most expensive places you can get bandwidth. I have projects where my entire infrastructure costs less than what the bandwidth charges alone would cost me at AWS...

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#313

Post by vidarh » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 7:14 PM UTC

ptaipale wrote: post #190

vidarh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

Then have the roaming charge regulated to 7€ per terabyte, instead of 7€ per gigabyte as now.

Maybe eventually, but the point is they had to start somewhere, and 7 per GB is still a substantial reduction.

The EU parliament wanted to go much further, starting at 4 and gradually reducing to 1. They'll get pushed further down eventually, but at the same time nobody wants to overdo this and cause problems for these providers by going too fast.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#314

Post by aquadrop » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC

imron wrote: post #210

narag wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you're not serious, are you?

Not that serious. But the grandparent post was someone from Latvia saying 'this is terrible our prices have gone up' which was followed by someone from France saying 'no this is great our prices have gone down'. Someone's paying for it, and I doubt it's the Telcos who are losing out.

Do you think Latvians don't go to other EU countries and don't use roaming? Those who do now pay less, so it's Latvians paying for Latvians.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#315

Post by jahnu » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 7:38 PM UTC

dx034 wrote: post #189

jahnu wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try and use your full data allowance abroad and get back to me.

Won't be a problem. They can have fair use policies for unlimited data but otherwise it'll be the same as using it at home.

Of course it is a problem. I pay for 10gb a month but go on holiday for say two weeks and only have 2gb available precisely when I'm likely to need most of my allowance. I get charged a ridiculous rate for each GB after that. This is a big improvement but is not the end of roaming as it is currently advertised.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#316

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC

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.

The difficulty here is gauging how happy or unhappy people are. People who don't travel so much may feel unhappy at subsidizing those who do, but it's like insurance. If you have to travel unexpectedly, suddenly that inconvenience seems well worth it compared to the unpleasant experience of receiving a large bill for traveling. This is even more true if your travel is involuntary (visiting a sick relative instead of taking a holiday, for example).

There was similar short-term dissatisfaction in the US as landline carriers moved towards offering free long-distance calling within the USA some years ago. Some people objected that they shouldn't have to pay more for phone service since they rarely made calls outside their own town town/county. But the market as a whole preferred the simplicity of a one-size fits all plan, and arguably some of the savings in reduced billing complexity found their way back to consumers, as landline pricing gradually fell to an even lower equilibrium in the following years. This was before mobile telephony really took off. I don't have links offhand, but I do remember being pleased by my low monthly telephony bills.

It's a good idea to consider the second-order effects as well as the first-order effects.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#317

Post by jahnu » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 7:43 PM UTC

giomasce wrote: post #237

jahnu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There are various limits. One of which is you have a limited amount of time you can roam for per year before you have to start paying. It's not too bad though. The real shit loophole is that they don't give you your full data allowance when roaming. It's needlessly complicated of course. Very rough idea: if you get 10gb for €10 a month you can roam for free for 2gb of that.

BTW, the free roaming data will increase in the next years (see second question in https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/faq/frequently... ).

Indeed, but still at prices which are well above current prices for my domestic rate. By 2022 one would imaging domestic rates will be still lower making that maximum rate much worse than it looks now. A true end to roaming would mean I can use everything I pay for exactly the same over the whole EU. Long way to go yet before we have a true single market.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#318

Post by ahallock » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 7:45 PM UTC

DrJokepu wrote: post #231

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…

Generally speaking, the problem with the "just stating facts" argument is that it's impossible to list all relevant facts and by picking which facts to list and which facts not to list, you are editorializing and making subjective judgements, which means it's far from being an objective thing.

Your comment also seems like a fallacy. How do you really know it's impossible to list all the relevant facts? I don't think you've addressed anything, just made some imaginary goal line that you can keep pushing back forever.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#319

Post by jahnu » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 7:46 PM UTC

kungtotte wrote: post #295

jahnu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There are various limits. One of which is you have a limited amount of time you can roam for per year before you have to start paying. It's not too bad though. The real shit loophole is that they don't give you your full data allowance when roaming. It's needlessly complicated of course. Very rough idea: if you get 10gb for €10 a month you can roam for free for 2gb of that.

The amount of roaming you get depends on your carrier and contract. We get up to 20 GB of roaming or your contract data cap, whichever is lowest. E.g. me and my wife can roam for 20 GB because our contract is for 24 GB, but if we had a 12 or 6 GB plan we could only get 12 or 6 respectively.

Right. That's why I said needlessly complicated :) Takes so much effort to work everything out. They rely on this to make profits from mistakes.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#320

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 7:54 PM UTC

mamon wrote: post #166

gmac wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.…

Roaming is relatively niche

Highly questionable. Concern for the poor that only appears in the context of government regulation often seems to be motivated more by dislike of regulation than worry about the lot of the poor.

Surely you have considered that one of the reasons poor people don't travel more is the predictable large roaming bill they may face upon their return. Once people are used to being in regular contact via cellphone, they don't wish to give that up for travel. Further, suggesting that vacations are the only reason people travel seems disingenuous. People are often motivated to travel in search of work, or to attend funerals, or other in- or semi-voluntary reasons besides leisure.