> Her proposals have faced fierce opposition from the largest networks, including Vodafone, Orange and Telefónica, which say the end of roaming within Europe could cost them €7bn (£5.9bn).
Delicious tears.
Though I object to the use of the word "cost", it will remove unmerited earnings but will not add costs to their balance sheet: notice how the operators whining the most are the pan-european ones? That's because they can currently charge roaming fees for operations within their network, fleecing their own users.
That's not how it works. If you're a cell provider, you've bought a lot of gear, permits, licenses, more gear - which cost. If you ever thought spending a couple hundred thousand $ for a big cisco switch was bad, the big mobile switching centers and thousands of cell sites needed are really expensive to commision and operate.
This means you take on huge credit when building the networks, meant to be downpaid over years and decades. If the future revenue stream disappears, you may very well be losing money on your initial investment.
I'm not saying many of the telcos couldn't do with a bit less profit, but don't pretend losing revenue is a non-issue. I'd say its likely a complete restructure of networks and service operators would be needed to really get rid of the roaming charges.
They could also loose revenue from competition because their prices suck. Companies are not entitled to being profitable, they have to compete.
Except in this case there are constraints that prevent full competition. There are only a handful of mobile phone companies that operate their own infrastructure. They constitute a oligopoly and a form of natural monopoly that can more or less dictate prices. The point of regulating utilities is to prevent this.
The classic economic problem with utilities (power, water, phone,gas) is they occupy what is called a natural monopoly[0]. My econ 101 prof explained it thusly: It would be really wasteful if there were 100 different power lines going to your house, yet you'd need at least that many power companies to have something approaching a free market where supply=demand. Not just is the 100 power line outcome wasteful, it won't emerge in a free market.
You can't remove the reasons this happens, you can however regulate it to either somehow cause a competitive market or prevent the monopolist from leveraging their position and price gouging.
Now, obviously cell phone carriers are not a monopoly. They are actually an oligopoly[1], but that doesn't change much and the barriers that lead to it are the same.
One of the big ones is that there is only so much feasible bandwidth to go around. The governments auction it off (in the best case).
In a really free market, anyone could transmit in any frequency, jamming everyone else. Could quickly degenerate into a costest of who jacks up power more.
Not to mention this could potentially make them more money if all of the sudden people can just talk to their relatives in other EU countries without having to pay "special fees".
Most carriers in Norway has begun to charge the same rate for calls/SMS/data to all the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland) as local usage, so it's not that unrealistic.
Not necessarily. With UK carrier rate structures as they are, it can often be cheaper to call internationally than within the UK.
Consider, for example, GiffGaff (part of O2): within the UK, 10p/min. Meanwhile, calling internationally from the UK: Germany, 5p/min; India, 2p/min; USA, 3p/min.
Telecom rate tarrifs are usually convoluted and political. Some places have the opposite of what you outline, where international calls pay an extra kickback to the telecom/government. Other places, like the US, had things setup so that calling people inside your state was more expensive than calling another state or calling from an international location.
This also creates incentives for people to setup grey routes. It's common to buy local prepaid SIM cards then hook them up to a GSM bank and sell "international" connectivity to calling card companies. One guy had his setup inside a van, so he could drive around town and avoid being triangulated by the local telco. (The local equivalent of the FCC will raid and steal your equipment if they can find you.)
If people are currently paying roaming costs, then the earnings are clearly merited. You might find the practice distasteful, and wish it did not exist, but that does not make it illegitimate; they found something the market would pay for, and successfully got the market to pay for it.
There's no monopoly on cell carriers, as evidenced by the three separate carriers mentioned just in the sentence you quoted.
Ok, first, there is an oligopoly of cell phone carriers: you don't actually have enough for it to be a free market. Second, you likely don't want there to be enough real carriers(i.e. with their own towers), for there to be a free market. That would involve massive amounts of wasted infrastructure. Thankfully, third, because of those infrastructure costs, it's unlikely you'd ever see that many cell phone carriers. Cell phone infrastructure isn't quite a natural monopoly[0], but it's close.
I normally agree with free market comments like the one above. The problem with cellular is that companies use a shared public resource. We the public grant monopolies to various frequencies for a fee. Even though a company paid the fee, it still remains a public resource and can fall under additional regulation.
Now, there could be argument that the public should not change the rules after the fact or whenever we feel like it. Instead review the contracts every 5 years or so and make changes then.
The fact that this was downvoted shows people on HN don't understand how the free market works. Adding more and more regulation only makes things worse for the end paying customer. Good luck.
You are right, some people on HN don't under stand how free markets work. Here[0][1], maybe after reading those, you will be one step closer to not being one of them.
Yes, that's why in the strictly regulated European telecom market consumers are systematically better off than Americans when it comes to cable, mobile, internet etcetera.
And not just on lower prices and better service, but actually more freedom and choice.
Cross-border roaming was the last thing that was still unregulated. Other than that, Europe is a telecommunications paradise for businesses and consumers compared to the US.
As far as I know, the US market is heavily regulated, with providers successfully suing municipalities and preventing them from building competing services.
The regulation here in the UK to force BT to allow other ISPs to use their infrastructure seems to have worked well - now most people have a large number of ISPs competing for their business (including BT). A quick check suggests I have at least 15 ISPs competing for my business with all manner of deals and packages - sounds pretty much like a healthy marketplace to me.
Adding more and more regulation only makes things worse for the end paying customer.
This is simply not universally true. The cell market doesn't exist without regulation. If any company can throw up a tower on any frequency and start a cell company the end paying customer is going to have a horrible experience.
like the wifi market? Oh right, open spectrum laws actually create useful services for consumers.
It is a fallacy to believe that frequency regulation is needed for services to come to market. Coopetition does happen in the real world (see all the devices made for open spectrum like 2.4ghz)
You can make a similar argument about any market. It's so much easier to believe the intuitive bs that the state can just control everything and keep prices down for everyone.
I'm outta here I just thought the userbase here would be less liberal.
If only there was some way to look at reality and see what can happen when government regulation is applied in the telecoms industry. If only there was some way you could read the posts above that give solid examples of where government regulation has forced competition to the massive benefit of consumers.
Have fun back at your anti-vaccination ultra-Christian extreme right-wing shill site, paid for by the Koch brothers in the hope that poor people will keep voting against their own interests (yup, we can say emotional trigger-words instead of presenting facts as well, just like you can!)
Large areas of EU policy show that this isn't the case. There's a valid "regulation is hard on small businesses" argument, but it doesn't apply to telcos, which are necessarily giant businesses. This sort of market is very prone to "gotcha" fees resulting in unexpected huge bills, and the EU has so far done an OK job of controlling them.
Do tell. I'd love you to explain this in detail instead of just snarking and running like all the other "free market über alles" folks infesting this thread.
Nah, they understand. They common trend on this site and a few other techy sites I frequent is the same, something for nothing. If a megacorp is making money it can surely stand to not make so much.
The very reasons to maintain some form of roaming charges comes down to, who built the towers? Who invested in the hardware, software, and persons, working to provide the service? I do not care one wit about this claim "public resources" when it comes to cell phones? Why not? Because it is a patent excuse to take. The same excuse is used when people want specific speech censored from the airwaves but not another. However, hell and high water reign should the same taking be done to something techies hold near and dear to their hearts, you would never see them support taking of speech rights or such with regards to their blogs, sites, and whatnot.
Back to roaming charges. Should we not then force nation states to not charge access fees to their networks? Many do. They charge carriers for calls going into their state owned agencies.
Simply put, don't allow roaming charges and costs will be spread to anyone using a cell phone, whether they roam or not. You cannot legislate away costs, you certainly can profit, but I guess the private investor should have known better. Kind of like government bonds, they are only really guaranteed the day they are written
This is one of the things the EU is really good at: making people-centric decisions, instead of corporation-helping choices.
This roaming-charges change has actually been a long time coming, with forced decreases in tariffs for a while now, so it shouldn't surprise anyone. I just wish some similar agreement can be reached (in time) with countries outside the EU.
> I just wish some similar agreement can be reached (in time) with countries outside the EU.
Intercontinental roaming charges are a bad joke (3$ incoming, 5$ out and yes, that's per minute) . What I do is to get a local SIM and communicate the number to those contacts that need it.
Internet (sometimes 20$ per MB and yes, you read that right) is less of a problem due the ubiquity of free WLANs.
Another really excellent thing the EU did is to mandate mini USB as phone chargers. With the noticeable exception of Apple every newer phone can be charged with any newer charger. This used to be a major pet peevee of mine.
I don't know if this still the case, but a while ago i bought an iPhone from UK (after the mini USB mandate), and it came with an adapter to miniUSB in the box. Even Apple had to abide to the new regulation.
As for the roaming charges, I completely agree. Even now, within Europe, it's really bad for data. I've traveled through 10 EU countries in the last 3 months, and had to buy 7 SIM cards, as my home carrier charges 2EUR for 5MB. I was lucky with my 3LikeHome sim card from Austria, which you can use with your home rates in a few other countries.
Yeah but that's an adapter, even though it does abide by the rules you still have to carry the adapter around. Most manufacturers just switched to miniUSB entirely, so you don't need an adapter, any combination of charger and phone should work (in practice there may be issues with undervoltage, I've seen combinations of phones and chargers not work)
micro USB is actually a very poor choice for a charger connection: it is max rated at 2.5W (way too low for an iPhone), it is keyed (you can only plug it in one way) and it is expensive (a whole bunch of pins you don't need). On top of that many people confuse it with mini USB, like you just did.
Micro USB has 4 pins (+/- Data +/- Power, 1 additional pin for host/device determination) Where are the bunches of pins you don't need?
And the power ratings are functionally design minimums so your USB device must work within those boundaries, while most phones and phone chargers can exceed them.
My kindle charger outputs 5 V 1.8 A for a total of 9 watts.
My droid charger outputs 5.1 V 0.75 A for a total of 3.8 watts.
My understanding is that, contrary to GP's comment, the EU didn't 'mandate microUSB'. The original MoU required the manufacturers[1] to get together to decide on a common external power supply "to allow for full compatibility and safety of chargers and mobile phones". So while officially CENELEC decided the standard, in practice they were never going to not adopt the manufacturers' recommendation, which was microUSB.
As for amount of power, I believe the USB power delivery spec allows 5V devices to draw up to 10W of power (5V at 2A) - though it's fairly new (2012), so I don't know how widely used it is yet.
Yes, the EU only mandated that the industry choose a common standard so they picked the cheapest of all the options they had. With the newer spec you can indeed draw more power but it requires hardware negotiation to prevent older devices catching on fire. Some of the other options on the table at the time were much more elegant and extensible to, for example, household appliances (USB is not allowed for use in the bathroom or kitchen). The other options were a few cents per connector more expensive so they never had a chance when the EU decided to leave it to the industry.
> sometimes 20$ per MB and yes, you read that right
I can confirm, just checked my data roaming rate (from the EU), it's 0.15€/MB for European (not just EU, also Switzerland, Norway or Iceland) roaming (which is already crazy expensive, my in-country plan is 0.0075€/MB even ignoring that it also provides voice and SMS); 0.30€/MB from the US and 13.00€/MB from just about everywhere else
Hopefully it will stay that way. I think global corporations have started increasing their lobbying in EU rapidly. It may be why the EU Comission usually seems to make the worse decisions, and the opposite of what the EU Parliament wants. If the lobbying extends from the EU Comission to the EU Parliament, that could change.
I hope this is the tip of the iceberg of better things to come.
One of the most disruptive ideas the EU is working on (among alternatives) is detaching the network from the operators. This can considerably reduce network capex, homogenise network technology and allow for a real single EU telecom space.
By having operators become clients of a single network users will benefit from increase pan-EU competition, with more competitive and transparent rates.
This has been partly done at national levels in similar sectors, specially in the gas and electricity sectors (see National Grid in the UK, Snam Rete Gas & Terna in Italy, etc.). Gas and electricity networks are private but regulated, and third parties have access rights to the network to retail gas & electricity. In this telecom case, operators don't have commodity risk, which makes third-party access to the network infinitely easier.
> One of the most disruptive ideas the EU is working on (among alternatives) is detaching the network utilizes operators.
Since i was quite young it blew my mind that we didn't have one universal network which every network utilises. It is clearly more efficient, removes redundancy, spreads costs.
It's not that crystal clear. I live in France now, where the last mile cables are detached from operators. As the cable to the place I live in is quite bad, no operator will ever do a thing about it. In Poland, it's still an anarchy... So when I receive bad service, I go to the competition and they put their own cable to my place. They have to compete on that part of quality of service, not just say "it's just bad around here, it's not our problem".
Networks can never work with capitalism, as there's more benefit to extending an existing network than creating multiple competing networks. Roads, Internet, wired phones. Thus the network might as well be owned and run by the government, and access to it sold to the public/companies.
I'm quite ignorant of the specifics of European and American telecom ecosystems. But I clearly remember the time when the network was owned and run solely by the Indian government. It was horrible. In the 80s, when we applied for a telephone line, we typically had to wait for about three years for it to be installed. To call someone in a different city, we'd have to place a "trunk call": call an operator, and request a line. The operator would call back when the line became available, typically an hour later. With private industry, even those who live each week hand-to-mouth can afford to carry around cell phones.
> Thus the network might as well be owned and run by the government...
Given a choice, I'd rather not live in such an ecosystem. Again.
Not really. You are referring to a privatisation, where most of its problems came from a lack of legal and regulatory framework. Germany, France and Spain have the train operator detached from the infrastructure/network, and they have the most developed rail networks in the world. But again, this is not the case. The telecom case is a rollup of assets into a NetworkCo, making all telecoms MVOs.
‘detached’ as in ‘different parts of the same company’ in Germany and a rather pro-SNCF entity in France. While this is generally a good idea, especially if you combine it with standard tickets s.t. you only need to buy one ticket even if you use multiple train operators on your route (cf. National Rail in the UK)[0], it is certainly not the reason France or Germany have the ‘most developred rail networks’: the reason for that is showing off to their neighbours, even if it sometimes doesn’t make much sense :)
[0] This only works in state-subsidised short-distance trains, long-distance trains not operated by Deutsche Bahn need different tickets, I believe the same goes for France.
Unfortunately you are mixing concepts and analogies. By detached I mean two independent companies, like I mention on the original comment. The rail-network analogy is not comparable to what I refer too. The energy sector analogy is a like-for-like example to the current telecom concept, again, like I mention in my original comment.
Could you explain how this Directive is likely to cause this? It seems significantly more likely, in my eyes, that this Directive will simply end up with even less competition than we already have, as large mobile networks across the EU will buy up smaller ones in other countries in a bid to reduce their costs when their customers roam.
If we want mobile networks detached from mobile infrastructure, we're going to have to legislate that, not piddle around with legislating roaming fees.
>homogenise network technology and allow for a real single EU telecom space.
Won't that lead to a slowdown in the development and implementation of new wireless technology? What incentive would governments have to upgrade existing cell towers to new technology?
Electric cables, water pipes, and gas lines don't need to be replaced every 5 years by new technology.
Tariffs/regulation can and do incentive investment in new technology. Incentives in wireless technology should be no different. Don't confuse that with the lifespan of an asset.
It sounds great on the base of it, but for a technology that hasn't completely matured it might be counterproductive. When deploying the next gen network, you'll have one big slow entity having to do it.
But for home internet connections that could be a good move.
If you have the "right regulatory structure", you might not need a giant private company holding everything. Just push the regulation every player in the field and have them follow the rules.
But I think it's actually the hardest part to solve, and the reason why I'm pessimistic about the whole thing.
I hate roaming charges as much as anyone, nobody wants to pay 200%+ when they go to France or anywhere else within the EU. That being said, competition at least around here for mobile/3G is extremely healthy, prices have come down year on year and the choice/availability has gone up.
What I fear would happen if this went into force is that many (all?) of the smaller operators would go out of business overnight as they couldn't find a network within all continental european countries who will roam for them at a reasonable price.
Then you'll have Orange/Vodafone/etc who own a lot of the infrastructure across europe leverage that so essentially they're the only competitive player and get to set the prices however they want. They'll sell their subsidiaries roaming at X and their competition roaming at X*1,000.
Just look at the US: Their networks are inter-state, and as a result of having to cover such a large landmass it is almost non competitive. You have three companies controlling the whole country. Prices are extremely high and services/choice is poor.
I'd take what we have now, roaming charges and all, over a three network oligopoly.
You are making a bad assumption: that the EU only regulates customer pricing. This is not the case. The roaming fees that operators can charge one another within the EU are also regulated.
I'm not sure about exact numbers, but at the moment I think they can charge eachother somewhere around 10 to 20 cents per minute at most (it differs for active/passive roaming). This limit would of course have to be lowered if roaming charges for customers were to be abolished.
I fear that we will end up with a complex web of interdependent price regulations that is extremely difficult to keep up-to-date in the face of changing technologies.
I also wonder who will want to invest in next generation networks if the government regulates prices even in fiercely competitive markets.
Mobile in the USA is pretty much the definition of a not fiercely competitive market. Prices and features among carriers are pretty much identical and expensive. And if you think that was coincidental, I have some spectrum to sell you...
I'd argue the fact that the EU legislates for customer's rather than for business' benefit is part of the reason the mobile market there is in so much better shape than here.
Many EU countries have regulators that make sure there is a proper market. I think that kind of regulation has indeed helped a lot.
You need to consider where we come from. Back in the 80s most EU countries had exactly one telco, which was owned and operated by the government. I remember very well that prices back then were exorbitant compared to the US.
When they privatised the industry, they created regulators to make sure private competitors could even enter the markets that were still dominated by the formerly state run behemoths. So all of a sudden there were tons of telcos, they were very well regulated and tried to expand beyond their national borders creating even more competition in the process. That's what led to lower prices.
But the kind of regulation that creates functioning markets is very different from the kind of crude price regulation they are attempting to do now. What we're seeing now is the EU trying to be populist and shake their image as being remote and disconnected from people's needs.
The telecom sector has been consolidating for a while now and we don't have as many players in the market as before. That's what regulators should focus on, not prices of particular services.
Is it really that onerous (from a regulatory and compliance standpoint both) to say "You are not allowed to charge roaming fees?"
It's not as if they're regulating the price of minutes or packages or something, here. They're outlawing a very particular class of charges with a very particular meaning, with what appears to be a very good reason.
As I see it, they are weakening an important principle of competition law for no good reason at all. If they find that these prices are the result of insufficient competition they should act to change the structure of the market, not fix individual prices. That's just lazy populism.
As far as I know the EU does cap roaming charges already, and they could continue to do so in the future. But as far as I know there is no rule which forces companies to charge equal prices for their competition and their subsidiaries across borders.
For one example, Vodafone UK for £3 will let you use your "UK minutes, texts, and data" in any european country. The reason they're able to offer that is because Vodafone runs networks in most european countries.
Maintaining infrastructure doesn't become more expensive just because the competition is using it when roaming.
What they're doing is basically double dipping charging customers for service and competitors for roaming which the network are passing along to the customers.
However you look at it the customer is the one getting screwed here.
They are only bitching because they're being forced to re think their business model and make it more fair.
When you think that Vodaphone is doing it even if you're still using their network just in another country it makes you think what's the difference between this and stealing? They're not competing with themselves so it's basically a scheme to make more money.
I'm not sure that's true. If Company A builds out a bunch of infrastructure but it's mostly used by Company B's customers, then Company A isn't getting the earnings it needs to pay back the infrastructure investment. Either Company B's customers need to send some revenue to Company A, or Company A is going to go out of business, possibly taking the infrastructure with it. Roaming fees, whether paid by the customers, the companies, or both, are necessary to support building and maintaining the infrastructure.
Now, when Company A and Company B are actually two divisions of the same parent company (which is apparently often the case for Vodaphone) then you're right; the roaming fees are double-dipping.
Company A is still able to adjust pricing on a global level (all customers) to compensate.
If too many of Company B's customers go on Company A's network pricing will increase until they start choosing cheaper networks automatically balancing load and keeping prices at a similar point.
Plus we're talking about roaming here it's not like a lot of people decide to go on vacation at the same time and stay there for years until the company collapses.
Yes, but the regulation covers maximum prices - it doesn't prevent operators from giving their subsidiaries lower prices. Though they're shooting themselves in the foot if they do, I think, as the EU would likely point to that and make it clear that it's either anti-competitive or a clear sign that the caps can be lowered further.
Sure, but it stop the problem (as an ancestor post says) of charging a subsidator X and charging others X×1000. Since X×1000 is capped, it's less of a problem.
If you're drafting legislation around roaming, why not write in reasonable competition provisioning while you're there? It won't be legal if we don't want it to be.
I find it odd that BT is required by law to allow other companies to access their infrastructure for the sake of competition but the 2-3 mobile networks are not.
>Just look at the US: Their networks are inter-state, and as a result of having to cover such a large landmass it is almost non competitive. You have three companies controlling the whole country. Prices are extremely high and services/choice is poor.
Where are you getting 3 from? Verizon, Sprint,(CDMA) AT&T, T-Mobile.(GSM) That's 4. There was a proposal for AT&T to buy T-Mobile but the Justice Department blocked that merger to preserve competition in the cellphone business.[1][2]
T-Mobile's coverage is poor in non-metro areas (I say this as a T-Mobile subscriber). The idea of a state-based phone operator that allows roaming from other states is an interesting one (though I'll admit I have no idea how it would play out)
Years ago (before smart phones and data plans) I had a friend who signed up with Sprint at address #1 with free roaming on his plan. He then went to school at address #2 and used his phone mostly at address #2 where he was roaming because Sprint didn't have coverage. Sprint didn't like this, because he was costing them more money to roam than to use their network, so Sprint dropped him as a customer for roaming too much.
With our currently mobile population, I'm not sure everyone would like that. I have a phone number from a place I haven't lived in the past 6 years. I'm never going to change my number, and I know I'm going to move to a new place sometime in my life, probably more than once.
You have no arguments from me about T-Mobile's coverage, as a former T-Mobile subscriber myself, but you can't say it doesn't exist.
AT&T paid T-Mobile billions of dollars as a result of the failed merger, so they were going to supposedly use that to improve their network. I didn't notice an improvement.
Maybe someone should start an Elon Musk Hacker News drinking game. Every time he comes up in a topic you drink a shot, if the topic has nothing to do with him or is ventures you drink two shots.
As far as that "idea":
- An "open source network" makes no sense at all. Open source, what? Open source customer's billing information? The Linux OS that drives most networks already?
- Elon Musk could have already done so in the US or Canada given how horrible the networks are in either country. He hasn't.
- Elon Musk doesn't work in communications currently.
- Elon Musk isn't like the joker of the deck that you can just use to solve any issue or play any hand.
Am I the only on that thinks this is a bit of an overreach? Seems to me, good justifications for legislating would be
-If customers were being tricked into paying roaming charges in nefarious ways;
-If there were serious externalities somehow not being included in the roaming charge transaction
-If there were monopolistic / market manipulating behaviour going on.
-If the companies were subject to a tragedy-of-the-commons situation where private resolution was not feasible (they're not- the public broadcast spectrum is both rival and excludable in practice).
Instead, the state interest according to Kroes is that it's an "irritant." This kind of top-down control seems a bit counter to the hacker/startup ethos.
Edit: if you're going to down vote, please can you comment and have a dialogue?
I didn't downvote but would like to comment either way. I think this is exactly something the EU should be doing. The EU is largely about breaking the borders between all these smaller countries and making trade and travel between these countries easier for EU members. Although the ease of trade and travel have certainly improved massively (no more need for passport controls, one currency for the Union), I think these mobile roaming costs are actually quite a big problem.
In the current situation, as a customer, when I'm on holiday in another EU country I have three options for using my iPhone on the go:
1) Shelling out for roaming costs, which are expensive, extremely untransparent, and seem very arbitrary. What are these costs for? Who determines what the right price is?
2) Buying a SIM-card in the country of my destination, which is cheaper but also prevents me from using my own phone number while abroad
3) Not using mobile data at all and hoping for free WiFi at my hotel or in the nearest village (which is what I do)
Removing roaming costs altogether means I can freely drive to France for a two-week holiday and use Google Maps or check my email on my iPhone, all within my normal data bundle, without the risk of getting a bill of a few hundred Euro.
> Am I the only on that thinks this is a bit of an overreach?
Not a all. Vodafone, Telefonica and Orange completely agree with you.
> Instead, the state interest according to Kroes is that it's an "irritant."
The state interest is the people's interest. Roaming charges are not in the user's interest:
1. It's very easy to be hit by roaming charges in Europe if you're not careful, many countries can be gone through in an hour or three and since Schengen moving across borders has become an habitual past-time.
2. The charges are not fair and not about costs these days, they're about free money, notice how the operators which have issues with that are present or have partnerships in pretty much all of the EU? A roaming user doesn't cost them much, but it earns them a lot.
3. Roaming charges are especially problematic with modern "always connected" smartphones, forgetting to disable data roaming (if you can even do so) is common, and the charges for data roaming are completely crazy.
If you live near a border, and the 'foreign' network mast is closer than your 'national' one, and has a stronger signal, you might be 'roaming' while at home.
That's why you don't tackle this at the electromagnetic wave level, you tackle it at the operator level. Or maybe at the phone level. Shouldn't the phone be able to recognize and prefer a local cell over a foreign one?
I mean, why does my phone prefer the crappy network that I have my crappy subscription with over the much stronger networks of the competitors? Why would this stop working when I'm near the border?
A phone can discriminate towards low signal strength cells of network A vs high strength cells of network B. Of course, the key word is 'can'; due to a lack of standardisation this will often fail to work properly for particular models.
Friend of mine lives 400m from a border. He has to call his cell provider monthly to contest the roaming charges he gets charged every month for using his phone at home. So far they've removed them every time.
>Not a all. Vodafone, Telefonica and Orange completely agree with you.
Of course they do, they already have near continental wireless coverage. The small carriers don't.
This would obviously lead to no more roaming at all, which run the small carriers out of business and creates a huge barrier for entry to new carriers (as the would need a huge network before even launching your service).
To me the ineptness of the practice seems to be reason enough.
For anyone who travels, it really is a hassle in 2013 to have to put everything digital in your life on hold and stop relying on your smartphone just because you are moving around inside of Europe.
Given how small the oligopoly of those companies is, and how they charge roaming fees even when you are still using their own network (only it's another subsidiary in another country), roaming fees seems to me like a case of distorted competition.
I come from the German-Swiss border, and roaming charges can be a total PITA over here. If you have your phone with roaming enabled (and most people do), and you come too close to the swiss border (which happens on the train line down the Rhein river), your phone will repeatedly switch from the German network to the Swiss network and back. Even if you have an all-germany flatrate, you will get milked over here.
Communication has become so essential to daily life, that having access to communication networks is as import as having access to water or electricity. Communication has become infrastructure, some might argue a human right and that changes the rules that apply to it.
Letting providers do as they want without restraints does not create desireable outcomes, as can be clearly seen right now. So it's necessary to apply some restraints that do create those desireable outcomes.
> If customers were being tricked into paying roaming charges in nefarious ways
If your phone rings abroad, and you don't pick it up, and the call goes to voicemail, they charge you for an incoming call and for an outgoing call. Even if the caller doesn't speak on your voicemail, you are billed at least 1 minute active + 1 minute passive.
Assume you're an Austrian, and you miss 3 calls while in Montenegro, that's 20€ in unexpected charges.
Then there's something wrong with your operator. Roaming charges are for the "international" segment: from home, to the country you are, and from the country you are to home. That's why you pay extra to make calls, and that's why you get to pay when you receive calls.
But it's also "opt-in": you only pay for what you accept. You won't pay for SMS because you can't elect to receive them or not. And, if you miss, or reject a call, it goes to your voicemail. And the voicemail is in your country operator's. So, of course, you won't pay. Unless you have a weird phone and the voicemail is in your phone. Then turn off your weird mobile phone.
That voicemails are not subject to roaming charges within the EU is a quite recent thing, and I'm not sure if it's a result of regulation or if the operators have just pre-empted being forced to do it. When roaming outside of the EU, you can still expect to get hit with massive charges for receiving voicemail.
It's result of a quirk of how voicemail calls get routed: If you set up call diversion to your voicemail with your network, you'd not pay anything.
But if you fail to answer, or divert calls to voicemail with your phone, the calls would get routed to the network your phone is active in, you'd fail to answer, and the call would get routed back by the operator you're roaming with, rather than having that operator somehow just signal that the calls should be diverted at source, and you'd get to pay for the pleasure.
At least that's the excuse the operators used. Of course it was particularly shitty that they'd charge people extortionate rates due to shortcomings of the way they do call routing.
I've been travelling for a number of years (when a MB in Europe was around 10€), inside and outside Europe, and never ever had this happen, or heard about this happening.
Probably something intentionally made by your operator — but in Spain, I don't know of a single mobile operator who does not route voicemail at their own network level.
Alas Montenegro isn't in EU (yet), so wouldn't be covered by this. I recently travelled around that part of Europe and it just shows the absurdity of roaming rates. Cross one border (into the EU) and suddenly roaming is 10% the price!
-If there were monopolistic / market manipulating behaviour going on.
If the market was operating efficiently roaming charges wouldn't be so high. They are high which discourages use and so is a drag on the whole economy (apart from the telcos).
If we left everything to the free market we would have the same problems the US has with it's telecoms infrastructure. Communications, just like other utilities are too important to the economy for governments to ignore.
Well, let's be precise here. The EU changes, like many EU changes are intended to create a "free market". It's not possible to have a free market without some level of government support (e.g. courts, contracts, regulations about externalities etc.). With utilities it's particularl crucial due to network effects.
The telecom situation in the USA, much like their healthcare, is not messed up because it's a free market, it's messed up because governments, under the guise of creating a free market, introduce absolutely brain-dead regulations that achieve the exact opposite of a free market and the corporations take advantage of that to gouge consumers, free from worries about competition because it's not a free market.
I utterly disagree with your reasoning, but downvoting HN contributors for having a different opinion should really be beyond us and there's nothing in your post, which warrants downvoting.
There is monopolistic/market manipulating behaviour going on - it's basically an oligopoly, and the barrier to entry into the mobile telecoms market (ie building your network) is only growing.
It is _amazingly_ expensive to start building a network.
There's about 4 vendors providing the gear needed for a large scale cell network. And they're not bothering talking to you unless you want to buy a lot of gear.
Then you need spectrum licenses. And since you're placing cell towers around, you're either going to rent rather expensive towers, or build your own, which requires permits and a lot of civil engineering.
It's a bit easier today, as there's more infrastructure in place - but you may very well end up needing to provide the network backhaul from a cell site, somehow get power lines to the cell site. And that cell site might need backup power, which require refueling and maintenance every now and then, you might need to build a small cabin to house the gear, and you might need to hire helicopters to fly in that gear.
When you get this far, you need a marketing department, so people can actually buy connectivity, refill cards, sim card distribution, and similar.
At some point you might need roaming agreements with others as well. If your're lucky the government requires you to have agreements with other operators in your country - important enough, cause unless you have greate coverage people won't bother if they can't use their phone. If you want your customers to use their phone while abroad, you get to make individual roaming agreements with all those other operators in other countries.
I don't think it is overreach even if it is a rather strong market regulation.
The EU has the responsibility to tear down economic borders inside the EU. Just like you don't have to pay import tax when buying stuff from another EU country, you should not have to pay roaming charges.
Obviously the better solution would be the free market takes care of that by itself. It didn't. And there are no signs of it happening. So the EU regulation is a pragmatic solution.
Essentially, roaming charges are of benefit to nobody but a small number of large telecoms. They hurt the consumer and they hurt business. Removing them will not cripple the telcos.
> If there were monopolistic / market manipulating behaviour going on.
In practice, with few exceptions, before the regulation started (remember, the EU already sets roaming price caps), there was a form of cartel system, at least informally; prices were pretty much standard and extremely high.
I agree that the best scenario would be one carrier simply dropping roaming charges and other carriers eventually following suit, because of market pressure. However, the fact that this hasn't happened makes me suspect that carriers are mutually agreeing not to drop roaming charges since it is such a big cash cow for them. I have no evidence for this, though.
Here's my question. Every comment I read here seems to assume that the roaming charges will be eliminated and that is that. Isn't it more likely the companies will raise prices elsewhere to compensate for the lost revenue?
I think everyone would prefer that. Basis ally now a few people pay a lot and most people try to avoid using the product as it has high unpredictable pricing versus the normal fixed monthly cost. A revenue neutral solution would be better.
It must suck cellphone-wise if you lived in one country and commuted daily to work into another. I'm sure that with the EU, and the ability to freely live and work within other EU counties, there are people who do that.
read the other posts. Most operators are present everywhere, it's just free money for them without any justification - that really hinders users in the process.
As a resident in Denmark, this is awesome news. It really sucks that you've got so many internet connected things, but after 300km MAX, you are on the other side of the border, and you are reduced to feature phone-like capabilities (Thanks Nokia/HERE for offline maps).
To people from US; Imagine living on the east coast (with the smaller states) and every time you move outside of your state, you had to use a feature phone.
We don't have to imagine it -- that is how it is in the US.
For example, if you are on T-Mobile USA, living on the east coast, anytime you drive west, after about 100km your "4G" smartphone is reduced to a feature phone (either on T-Mobile's own GRPS/EDGE-only network, or hyper-restricted voice/sms-only roaming on AT&T).
This happens even if the other operators have extensive 3G/4G/LTE networks available in those cities.
This has a lot to do with T-Mobile being a weak network. Even in the middle of nowhere on the interstate in West Virginia, I had 3G data with Verizon. Granted that if I moved further from the interstate, there would have been nothing, but the interstate is usually where you are when you're away from population centers.
The budget carriers which resell existing networks (TracFone, Virgin, SimpleMobile, etc) have no roaming at all, so when you leave the coverage area of the resold network you just don't have a working phone. Legally 911 will work, but nothing else.
The USA is HUGE. It's not cost effective to put data where every inch of land is covered, ever slow data (EDGE). There's a ton of sparsely populated land, and rural areas. T-Mobile is a small operator and has the crappiest network coverage. It is 1000x better than it was 4 years ago, as they are adding more coverage, but it is expensive and slow. T-mobile is the worst for data coverage, and voice coverage. I had them for years, and I eventually dropped them for Verizon because I was finding myself without any cellphone service so often, because I travel often, and I find myself in rural areas. If I stayed in the city all the time it would work for me. That means no voice, no SMS, no data.
Take a look at T-Mobile's 3G and 4G coverage map (and voice):
The other big issue is we have two standards here. GSM and CDMA. GSM is what T-Mobile and AT&T use, and CDMA is what Verizon and Sprint use. These can't play nice-nice with each other. Plus AT&T's 3G was different from T-Mobile's 3G so a AT&T 3G phone couldn't work with T-Moble's 3G signal and vice-visa.
With 4G LTE, I believe this is a standard that both GSM and CDMA are "upgrading" to. I know that my CDMA phone needed a SIM card to work with the 4G LTE network (CDMA cards previously didn't require SIM cards).
Long overdue, especially for people living in the smaller EU countries, where driving ~3 hours in any direction will render your smartphone useless (or very expensive).
Large carriers, which are complaining the loudest, shouldn't have an issue with this, since they are present in virtually all EU member states.
(This doesn't look to be symmetric, for some reason--if you're a Three customer in one of those countries I don't think you avoid roaming charges in the UK.)
Three customers in Italy had the no-extra-charge-when-roaming feature already 4-5 years ago actually. That was both for data and voice. http://www.tre.it/opzioni/estero/all-estero-come-a-casa EDIT: I see there was a bit of overhead actually. not quite the same tariff.
About time. I'm waiting for this for a while. I travel a lot in EU and it's very annoying going around with a bag of sims in my pocket. Kroes does some nice things; hopefully it'll go through.
This could have the potential to become quite disruptive. If there are no roaming charges, I will be free to select any operator from any EU country and am not stuck with the ones where I reside. This will increase competition, and lower prices (or service levels will increase).
Not really - no roaming charges doesn't mean it's not more expensive to call people from other countries.
So if you have a number in France, but you call mostly UK people, it will still cost you more than if you had a UK number - it just won't cost you more if you're calling them from France than if you're calling them from the UK.
Other option: if you have friends or relatives in the other country, just bring your SIM card with you when you leave. Frankly it's so tiring to live on the border and pay for the roaming just because cell phone decided to be in roaming.
I don't know about the situation in most of Europe, but I think at least some countries could be severely disrupted by French operators, which seen some very low cost alternatives emerge since the irruption of a 4th operator in early 2012.
2h + SMS only costs 2€/mo, where it used to be 16-25€ only two years ago ; and the full package (unlimited everything, with data bandwith capped after 3GB) 20€
Now if there's a country with even cheaper mobile plans... I'd like to see that
Others make the point about calling costs, but if you want data only (say for a tablet/laptop/mifi) an any-network roaming SIM would be very attractive. For example my current network is great in London, but has no signal at all in my hometown. It would also be handy for use on the train, where coverage on all networks is patchy.
This will eventually lead to mobile phone charges balancing all over the European continent. Otherwise people in Denmark will be using Bulgarian or Romanian pre-paid SIM cards buying credit online assuming that mobile providers can't charge the same for the services in richer and poorer countries.
This could be the case for the internet, but AFAIU not (so far) for the calls or SMS. No roaming fees means that if you have a Bulgarian SIM and live in Denmark and you call a Bulgarian number, you will pay as if you were in Bulgaria. But they can still tax you more when you're calling to the Danish or any non-Bulgarian number.
Anyway, for people who rather use internet than make phone calls, this can be a good deal indeed.
This is definitely not a good thing.
It is a step in the wrong direction that the European Union gains more power to regulate the market in this fashion.
The reason operators are able to charge for roaming as they do, has a lot to do with the fact that the telecommunication business isn't a free business. Currently only a select few in each country who are paying a large licensing fee are allowed to set up the different types of networks (GSM, UMTS etc).
What is happening is you grant special benefits to the operators, so they are working in a protected environment. Of course they are going to charge extra if no-one is there to bid lower.
What the EU is doing right now is trying to fix a symptom created by an already wacky system that their member states have created themselves.
> What is happening is you grant special benefits to the operators, so they are working in a protected environment. Of course they are going to charge extra if no-one is there to bid lower.
If that is the disease that gives the symptom of roaming charges, then surely the cure is to eliminate the transaction costs of using local providers while you're in another EU country, in order to enable free-market competition between providers in different countries.
Which, er, is exactly what this proposal is suggesting... From the article: ""From 2014, customers would be able to keep costs down by selecting another provider for calls, texts and internet data services while travelling, if their own network charges extra for service abroad. They could do this without having to change their phone number or buy a new sim card."
No - that proposal just tweaks the protected environment. You, and the proposal only mentions an idea for how to cure the symptom, not the disease.
That cure, for the symptom, is a bad thing for at least two reasons.
First, the actors in the environment needs to shift focus from improving their service and lowering price, to covering the lost revenue due to new legislation.
Second. The ones barred from taking part in this market (those that didn't get a license) are unable to improve customers services through participating in competition with lower prices, innovative new features etc.
> the actors in the environment needs to shift focus from improving their service and lowering price, to covering the lost revenue due to new legislation.
That argument is sufficiently general that it applies to any measure that in some way reduces an actor's revenue, irrespective of whether that revenue loss is due to a greater or lesser free market. 'If the government stops subsidising lemonade stands €10 a day, they'll have to shift focus from improving their service and lowering price, to covering the lost revenue'.
In this case, the lost revenue is from having to compete with mobile operators in other countries in a single, common European market (a common market is the original and primary goal of the EU). So yes, they will lose revenue by having to compete in a free[1] market, rather than - as they do at the moment - taking advantage the fact the each country is effectively silo'd off in a separate market (from transaction costs) to avoid that competition. Cry me a river.
[1] well, free-er at least - I take your second point that it'll still be a ways from completely free.
TLDR: you're ironically using a fully general argument against government intervention to implicitly argue for less competition and a less free market (the status quo).
There's nothing wrong with a general argument being applied correctly. Taking your lemonade example, i see nothing wrong in removing subsidies because that is removing the disease. (the disease being subsidies that skewed competition).
The reason it is wrong in the case of roaming is because you are imposing yet another regulation (not removing any). That means the actors doesn't have to shift focus towards acting in a freer market, but rather in a more restricted one.
If a ban on roaming prices was enacted worldwide do you think that would make for a more free market?
You're still focusing too much on the (rather misleading) "ban roaming charges" headline, instead of looking at what the proposed legislation will actually do ("push... roaming out of the market" by allowing people to "select... another provider for calls, texts and internet data services while travelling ... without having to change their phone number or buy a new sim card").
On the larger point, I'm fascinated by what seem to me to be the different instinctive reactions to proposals of supra-national common markets, free trade agreements, etc. by European-style 'classical-liberal' libertarians as opposed to the American brand of libertarianism.
The former generally support them, due to the benefits of having a single market - increased competition, reduced barriers to entry of other countries' markets, theories of comparative advantage, and so on. The latter, AFAICT, oppose them because they're Another Regulation which is Always Bad. Never mind that the purpose of the regulation is to remove 27 silo'd, anti-competitive, semi-protectionist national markets and replace it with a single European market.
You see the same split in discussions of anti-monopoly, anti-cartel etc. regulations - generally supported by European-style libertarians, with a view that competition is important in a free market and that may sometimes need government intervention to keep the market free, and opposed by American-style libertarians and corporatists on the grounds that government intervention should always be opposed.
> Currently only a select few in each country who are paying a large licensing fee are allowed to set up the different types of networks
Just like in pretty much every country in the world. Spectrum is a public resource, and not an infinite one. Every allocation given to a private company deprives society of other potential uses of that spectrum.
The EU communications market is already vastly more competitive than e.g. the US market in many areas, _thanks_ to extensive regulation to force unbundling of a lot of network and consumer services. This is about fixing some of the remaining problems, yes.
If anything, the regulation of the communications market in the EU is both one of the biggest successes in recent years, and one of the areas where EU decisions are most popular with EU citizens.
That is exactly the Point. Spectrum is scarce, and just like land areas are treated(mostly) with property rights, so should radio waves. That it historically has been mistreated doesn't make the solution in the subject any better.
>Spectrum is a public resource, and not an infinite one. Every allocation given to a private company deprives society of other potential uses of that spectrum.
Then you divide the spectrum into chunks and sell 10 year licences to each one to the highest bidder. Problem solved, regulatory capture averted.
You can't just allow anyone to setup a mobile phone network. There needs to be some central organisation and control of spectrum allocation because otherwise it is all too easy to tread on peoples toes and interfere with other transmissions either accidentally or intentionally.
No there doesn't "need" to be. It might be useful to have a list describing owners of different wavelengths and in what areas, but until there is a dispute, there is no problem. If a dispute arises, it can be taken to court, and the right to ownership can be settled. Such disputes can be settled like any other property right disputes in court.
Long time coming. India (which is a pretty huge country) did away with roaming (incoming call) charges back in 2003. What followed, was a telecom revolution; albeit with the evil of corruption along the way but good did come out of sensible and foresight.
Interestingly enough (Telia)Sonera has already removed (some) of it's roaming charges when roaming on their own network. I think that's quite nice of them, even though it probably was mostly a marketing move preempting this EU decision.
Yeah I just recently found out about it. Awesome news as I just moved from Finland to Estonia (but will spend a lot of time in Finland too) a week ago. It would be a hassle with two SIM-cards. It has always sucked to go on trips through many countries where you really could use affordable data, to book hotels/hostels, view Google Maps, Translate among a million small things that make mobile internet useful in the first place. I really love this about the EU; making decisions for the people instead of corporations.
Most of the phone market is very transparent. It's just the roaming charges that make them feel like a bait and switch. Higher monthly fees are better than roaming charges, because there's clear and transparent competition there.
Simply, because the monthly fees aren't already higher. If a company could raise the prices and still keep enough users such that it generates more profit than currently, it would have already done so. If they could and haven't, they're leaving money on the table that a competitor could take. Companies have a lot of incentive to hire people to notice if money is being left out, so it's not prudent to assume there is.
Although it's possible, it's unlikely. Roaming costs used to be obscene, like €1.70 per minute to make or receive a call (that's what it cost me in non-EU Switzerland a few months ago). Telecos would have to make monthly costs ten times more expensive to compensate.
No matter what, telecos are going to lose out on the roaming cash cow.
Even if they would do that, it would be a good thing, because the fees would be spreaded among all customers. Customers won't have to worry about roaming charges, which is a positive change for no additional costs on average.
It might, but then there are several companies to choose from and free market principles seem to work in this case. At least there's usually some local regulations keeping companies from colluding.
Because that number is the most competitive and most user-visible. When you buy your phone service, you get to compare it to the cost of other phone service providers.
Hear hear, its costs them 7bn ? How about 7bn less revenue from something that is so overpriced its not even funny.
Im glad WhatsApp already killed SMS in many countries, the money made on overpriced SMS/MMS must have been ridiculous..
I hope IP will replace all the other stuff eventually. If your abroad its relatively easy to find a Wifi and use Skype/Viber/WhatsApp, so we just need to get even more Wifi!
> "From 2014, customers would be able to keep costs down by selecting another provider for calls, texts and internet data services while travelling, if their own network charges extra for service abroad. They could do this without having to change their phone number or buy a new sim card."
Seems to me like one of the goals of the new regime is to move at least a bit away from the (somewhat clumsy) regulatory approach of setting price controls, in favour of an approach of reducing transactional costs in order to enable free-market competition between providers in different countries.
As much as I hate the outrageous high roaming charges, I'm not sure regulating them completely away is the best idea. Dictating companies how much and for what they can charge is one of the strongest possible market intervention, and may very well lead to less competition and therefore, higher prices and (eventually) less innovation.
Personally I think the same effect could be achieved by a much smaller intervention, namely decoupling billing from physical SIM cards. If it was possible to get the local (prepaid) rate without having to get a local SIM card (which, even in 2013, is often a somewhat difficult procedure, especially if you don't speak the local language), there would not only be no reason for roaming charges any more (just get a cheap prepaid rate and you are set), but there would also be more (not less) competition, because one could switch providers any time, even in his own country. The phone number, of course, should remain bound to the SIM card, just the billing should be "virtualized".
While it is nice the EU is regulating the mobile phone market like this, it sometimes creates funny situations. In many countries it's cheaper to send an SMS being abroad. Right now the regulated cap for an SMS sent in roaming is at €0.09 and will be €0.06 in 2014, but sending texts from your country often costs €0.15 :)
It's not unusual to find while roaming that MMS is cheaper than SMS. As in it would be cheaper for me to write out my message by hand, take a photo of it and sent that, than just to send a text message.
Yes, I noticed that, when I was visiting Crete a week ago. Back home in Germany a text message costs me 0.14€, during vacation I was paying 0.09€.
Regulations create funny pricing structures sometimes. :)
About four years ago I lived in Tanzania. I had a sim card from Zain(* ). As standard, it had no roaming charges in East Africa and parts of the middle east. In foreign countries, you could even make calls at the local rate. It's great to see Europe catching up.
I think this is great, and I cannot wait for this to happen, but we also should credit some operators for their current efforts.
O2 launched in UK Tu Go app which I find really great. It basically allows you to make and receive calls (and text messages) over wifi . Not only it is great if you have spotty reception at home, but you can use your phone whenever you find public wifi abroad.
Roaming charge made more sense when you were actually roaming to another carrier when you went to another country. But now that carriers in the EU are almost all trans-national roaming charges make less sense. They're just a relic of the past.
I'm appalled by all the anti free market comments here. Governments have no business dictating simple contractual agreements such as this. So long as governments allow adequate competition the markets will meet customer demands.
> So long as governments allow adequate competition the markets will meet customer demands.
This is demonstrably not the case with cell phone service providers.
Mobile telephony providers use deliberately confusing pricing to prevent price comparison. They use contract lock in to prevent customers switching contracts. They exploit the apathy and inertia of customers.
What would work in an ideal situation is not what would work with the situation we have. Tightly regulated, often government owned, communication networks are being deregulated, split off from those government owned companies, while expanding into new markets.
We need regulation to prevent incumbents from exploiting their government-subsidized position, and to protect naive users from themselves.
> Mobile telephony providers use deliberately confusing pricing to prevent price comparison. They use contract lock in to prevent customers switching contracts. They exploit the apathy and inertia of customers.
There are many providers now who don't require contracts. Every provider in the US has some sort of prepaid / no contract plan. The prices are much better than contract plans too, at least in the US.
> We need regulation to prevent incumbents from exploiting their government-subsidized position, and to protect naive users from themselves.
No, you highlighted one of the problems. The government needs to stop backing monopolies / oligopolies and allow competition to flourish. Government involvement always compounds itself. Subsidization and promotion requires regulation later to compensate for the lack of a free market.
A completely free market is a market where you'll get collusion, monopolies, price fixing, corruption and a hundred other vices which are considered universally bad. Roaming charges are another good example that a completely free market is not an efficient market.
In fact, a completely free market is an anarchy. So not only will you get monopolies and price fixing, you'll also get armed gangs that run around and steal your stuff.
I agree in principle, but since mobile spectrum is in itself a government-granted monopoly (oligopoly), some regulation might be acceptable or even necessary, to prevent against exploitative business practises (I consider the absurdly high roaming charges before they were regulated as a prime example for this - there is no way 2 Euros per minute reflect the real cost for the provider).
That having said, regulation should be as minimal as possible, to avoid unwanted side effects, therefore I'm not convinced that regulating away roaming charges completely is the best approach - IMHO it would be better to just allow everyone to get local rates without having to change the SIM card (see my other post for details).
> Due to other unnecessary government regulation. Regulations always have a snowball effect.
This is simply not true. If it was not regulated at all, the situation would be worse. This is an industry that has a natural tendency to become mono/oligo-polic. (Similarly to water supply inustry.)
> That's the customer's problem, not the government's. It benefits customers who do make optimal decisions.
That deserves a longer discussion but I'll try to sum it up. One example of a regulation that helps customers make better decisions is that misleading advertisment is banned. When I say regulation, I mean that the customers collectively decided that it would be better for everyone if misleading ads were banned. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this.
I'm appalled by all the anti free market comments here
Most of the comments are from customers who feel overcharged by their providers, who have had a pretty free market in which to operate over the last number of decades.
Governments have no business dictating simple contractual agreements such as this
But they do have a business dictating that monopolies/oligopolies can't screw their customers, which is what is happening with roaming charges in Europe.
So long as governments allow adequate competition the markets will meet customer demands
See above, the operators have had many years to sort this out and have not. Your ideology seems to have run up against an edge case.
> So long as governments allow adequate competition the markets will meet customer demands.
Did you even read the article? The whole point of the new regulations is to allow competition between providers of different countries in a common EU telecoms market (as opposed to the current situation where individual countries are effectively silo'd off). I'd love an explanation as to how exactly that's "anti free market".
Delicious tears.
Though I object to the use of the word "cost", it will remove unmerited earnings but will not add costs to their balance sheet: notice how the operators whining the most are the pan-european ones? That's because they can currently charge roaming fees for operations within their network, fleecing their own users.