European roaming charges will end in 2014
wired.co.uk
European roaming charges will end in 2014
1–10 of 105 posts
Re: European roaming charges will end in 2014
#2The article misses the fact that telcos are about to raise prices locally in return.
Personally, I welcome this step since plans are cheap as hell in most countries anyway compared to, say, the US.
Re: European roaming charges will end in 2014
#3This 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 ;)
Re: European roaming charges will end in 2014
#4This 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 an…
As far as I'm concerned, this is bigger than the freedom of physical movement within the EU country borders. Now our data will move with us!
Re: European roaming charges will end in 2014
#5The article misses the fact that telcos are about to raise prices locally in return. Personally, I welcome this step since plans are cheap as hell in most countries anyway compared to, say, the US.
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).
Re: European roaming charges will end in 2014
#6This 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.
Original article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...
(Edited to make clearer why a pan-European operator would support this)
Re: European roaming charges will end in 2014
#7I 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.
Re: European roaming charges will end in 2014
#8How can this happen? the Daily Mail tells me nothing good comes from membership of the EU!!
Re: European roaming charges will end in 2014
#9This 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 an…
As far as I'm concerned, this is bigger than the freedom of physical movement within the EU country borders. Now our data will move with us!
I don't think I'd go that far! It's an added convenience, but my data already moves with me through the EU, since non-phone internet access (coffee shops, libraries, McDonald's, 7-11, hotels, etc.) is pretty widespread.
Re: European roaming charges will end in 2014
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I'm concerned, this is bigger than the freedom of physical movement within the EU country borders. Now our data will move with us!
I don't think I'd go that far! It's an added convenience, but my data already moves with me through the EU, since non-phone internet access (coffee shops, libraries, McDonald's, 7-11, hotels, etc.) is pretty widespread.
It seems that you haven't traveled to Germany yet. Public Wifi is barely available because of legal risks and hotels still try to charge you something like 10 euro for a day of internet access. When I went to Dublin in Ireland the situation was almost as bad.