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European Parliament Votes For Net Neutrality, Forbids Mobile Roaming Costs
First time accepted submitter TBerben (1061176) writes "The European Parliament has voted to accept the telecommunications reform bill. This bill simultaneously forbids mobile providers from charging roaming costs as of December 15, 2015 and guarantees net neutrality. Previous versions of the bill contained a much weaker definition of net neutrality, offering exemptions for 'specialized services,' but this was superseded in an amendment (original link, in Dutch) submitted by Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake (liberal fraction). Note that the legislation is not yet definitive: the Council of Ministers still has the deciding vote, but they are expected to follow the EP's vote."
Catch that? including social media such as Facebook
I knew Facebook was everywhere. Taken over little by little. First Occulus, now the Occident.
Have you read my journal today?
I'm big on NN, but I do admit there are good points made for market driven forces to allow buildup of delivery services. That breaks down with the lack of competition at the ISP level. I assume its similar in Europe as the US.
Riddle me this. If Netflix pays and ISP for delivering its content with quality...should not all subscribers to that ISP, regardless of what plan they signed up for, get Netflix at the highest possible bandwidth?
This issue can't be piecemeal-ed.
Option A : Mobile providers make less money next year.
Option B : Mobile providers raise the standard charges the exact necessary amount to avoid having losses due to this law.
Option C : Mobile providers raise the standard charges more than necessary and justify the raise saying ordinary people need to pay for the yuppies who roam Europe in their sports cars while chatting on their phones.
Well, I'll be interested in seeing what coverage tourist hotspots will have in the future.. The incumbent operators will have little or no incetive to build out their network capacity/coverage, since the need to upgrade capacity is mainly driven by tourists. Which they will not make much money off anymore.
I live in India and here too, the roaming charges are exorbitant. Though there are only a handful of operators, I see no technical reason why roaming charges should exist (Similar to how SMS has no implicit cost to the telecom, but we are charged anyways). I can only dream of a day where such a law will be passed in my country *No roaming charges* *Weep with joy*
I'm moving to Europe. The real parts, not the Russian parts.
Having worked in the roaming business for GSM operators, I have been told stories of how a 15 people department secured 50% of a certain client company's profits. Yup. That was the roaming department managing and implementing all the bilateral roaming agreements.
...how much money the (European, at least) GSM operators make on roaming. If you saw the numbers.
In the USA, you'd need more than just a dozen nominally different ISPs. You'd need these ISPs to be truly independent, rather than simply different masks laid over the same set of functionally identical 1% ruling class predators. You'd need a culture that rewards progress, rather than one that permits a hereditary ruling class to establish strong legal barriers to free market functions.
Where I am, there technically are choices. Satellite (slow and unreliable), cellular (expensive for any reasonable amount of use), cable (if you can deal with the cable company, and its notoriously unreliable here), phone DSL (slow, but reliable). I have the DSL, and I pay for the slowest possible connection -- 6 megs. What I get is 1.5. I'm inside the city limits, just too far away from everything.
Then again, they're talking about gigabit to the home over fiber. Unless, of course, someone complains that the city utility is preventing competition.
There's little actual cost involved in facilitating roaming. What happens is that every network charges the others high roaming charges, and nobody has any incentive to be the first one to drop and therefore lose the money.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I wondered how this would affect their rates, then a google search produced -
http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/prnewswire/press_releases/North_Carolina/2014/04/02/LA96177
Cool for those that frequent travel over the pond often, but, for the carribeans, south, central americas, no love -
$1.71per min outgoing calls
$1.13per min incoming calls
$0.51per SMS
$8.57per MB
If you're one who vacation frequently in these spots, & may have to overcome the language & time barriers upon stepping off the plane, the truphone sim, is good ONLY for a quick fast, until you can land a local prepaid sim, which may take & communicational effort..
I'm thinking at worst, in place such as St Martin, where the island is divided on ither side with cell provider coverage (I think digicel's trying to change that), the work hunting down & obtaining a prepaid sim when you switch sides from French to Dutch..
the roaming charges of carriers, are akin to interests charges of financial institutes..
FTFY
last time I was in hull, there was only one choice.
It's called competition and clearly there's something in it for them as they can operate.
It's nice to see Brussels actually making itself useful. Next they should work at banning mandatory TV licensing which is obnoxious and should not exist in the 21st century.