EC Calls For End To Mobile Roaming Charges

An anonymous reader writes "European travellers who use their mobile phones abroad could soon see a dramatic reduction in their bills, after the European Commission announced plans to eradicate roaming charges by 2015. In a consultation paper launched yesterday, the EC invited consumers, businesses, telecom operators and public authorities to evaluate the EU's existing roaming rules, and to share their ideas on the best ways to boost competition in roaming services. 'Huge differences between domestic and roaming charges have no place in a true EU Single Market,' said vice-president of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes. 'We need to address the source of current problems, namely a lack of competition, and to find a durable solution. But we are keeping an open mind on exactly what solution would work.'"

Comments

Yes please.

[tenchikaibyaku]

This is one of the places where I, for one, would welcome more regulation. The roaming charges are often completely absurd, and I don't see the free market taking care of it anytime soon. Now, if they could fix the roaming charges for data connections outside of the EU too... (over 10€/MB? Seriously?)

Re:Yes please.

[timbo234]

No, that's socialism, and you go to hell for that

I realise you're being sarcastic but it's still worth pointing out that this isn't socialism, it's the use of the same anti-collusion (anti-trust) laws that you guys have over in the US. Basically the EU Commission worked out that phone companies were colluding (illegal in the free market) to fix phone charges for roaming.

They then had the choice of going through a normal collusion investigation, spending huge amounts of tax-payers money in court and investigation fees and at the end probably coming up with fines of a few hundred million Euros - a small write-off for these companies. They chose the smart way - since the EU is one market companies shouldn't be allowed to charge higher prices for services that are 'imported' from another country in the EU.

It's a rare example of governments just doing their job properly, although it's not all perfect. 2015 is a long time, especially since they started this in 2007 or 2008 and since then have been slowly lowering prices - it's gone from extreme rip-off towards the current more moderate rip-off. They really should have brought this law in for 2011 - 3 or 4 years is more than enough time for phone companies to adjust, esp. since most mobile contracts are less than 2 years.

Re:Yes please.

[ConfusedVorlon]

It isn't national laws that make the national data prices work - it's plain competion.

The thing is; When people sign up for a contract, they all ask
1) How much do calls cost
2) How much does data cost
3) What 'free' phone do I get

so the companies compete on these

Then they shaft you with the items that you weren't paying attention to; International roaming, calls, etc.

Since these are a small concern for most people - there isn't any real competion in it.

Same thing with credit card companies; They compete on the headline interest rate, then shaft you on the fees.

Customers are shallow in their purchasing decisions, and there aren't many choices anyway (~four operators in the UK).

Competition works for the headline stuff, but in complex products it doesn't work for the secondary items.

Data is included, but not clearly..

[cheros]

The paper includes questions about that last frontier of all rip-offs: data traffic.

The prices you pay for phone call roaming have indeed been affected by EU rules, but you now get ripped off over data - the cheapest resource to provide as the whole infrastructure has already moved to IP (that was one of the reasons 2.5G to 3G took so much time - the underlying security model had to be changed). This is partially visible in the VoIP and WiFi comments, so they're not ignorant of the issue - maybe I'm just too picky :-).

I cannot see the paper make a clear distinction between voice and data, but on the other hand, it's not that clear on packing the two together either so if you answer, make the distinction and address both separately.

Re:"Over there!"

[Captain Segfault]

There's no realistic way of collecting 30-ish countries, most with a distinct language and culture compared to the rest, as a single nation.

You mean like India?