Slashdot Mirror
EU Announces Deal To End All Wireless Roaming Charges (venturebeat.com)
The European Union took a big step toward creating a Digital Single Market today with the announcement of a deal that would end roaming charges for mobile consumers across the continent. From a report on VentureBeat: The plan had originally been announced two years ago when the European Commission unveiled an ambitious plan to create a DSM that would unify the continent's fractured rules around digital content, ecommerce, and mobile communications. However, the plan to end roaming charges across boarders ran into stiff opposition from telecom carriers worried about profits and consumers who were concerned about limits it imposed on data usage. As a result, the proposal appeared dead at one point last year. But negotiators said today they had reached an agreement on technical issues like sharing carrier costs across networks and a gradual phase-out of caps on data usage.
that we Brits will miss out on...
Since HTTPS can't be cached and more and more multimedia is being used on weebsites (not to mention the increased size of pictures on some sites), the amount of data usage is getting higher every year. The cost of that would be too much if limits are kept the same as they are now.
Write and/or read. https://scifurz.wordpress.com/
Common Carrier all fiber, cable, cellular networks, everyone runs over the common carrier, no more fragmentation, no more limitations as all companies pay the same rate to run over the same equipment....
Of course this would end the gold-pressed-latinum mining that the Big 2 are doing right now.
Now I have to wonder when the Greatest Nation on Earth is going to do the same.
Oh. I forgot myself for a moment. It's profit over people. All the people, all the time.
Roundabout, but effective. The problem is vertical integration. The carrier owns the towers, and sells the handsets. As a result, if you want a specific plan, you're stuck with the limited phones that carrier supports and the tower network that carrier uses. You want these things to be separate. Companies which own towers compete with each other. Companies which sell with service compete with each other. And companies which sell handsets compete with each other.
I'm usually critical of the EU's (over)regulation. But this is one thing they're doing right - maximizing competition so the free market can decide who is best and who deserves to go bankrupt.
Common Carrier all fiber, cable, cellular networks, everyone runs over the common carrier, no more fragmentation, no more limitations as all companies pay the same rate to run over the same equipment....
And no more incentive to maintain, improve, or differentiate that infrastructure. It's like arguing that we should consolidate the food production industry so we can have a consistent, efficiently manufactured Soylent food product everywhere in the EU to fulfill your nutritional needs. One size fits all tends to be pretty ugly. I hear they're coming out with Soylent Green in a few months. Yum!
Issue here is with no limits, there is no reason you ever need to have plan with your (actual, functional) local provider. If costs in Denmark are high, because workers operating infrastructure need higher salary to live on, or Danish government happens to tax wireless more, you can sign up for plan in Romania whose costs are based on Romanian labor costs and tax structure, yet continue to actually use Danish infrastructure all the same. If taken far enough, Romanian carriers will have to raise their prices to account for their share of Danish infrastructure costs, but that means all Romanians would then be paying those costs (while still on lower Romanian salaries) while Danish tax and government budget is being undermined.
Normal people don't need "unlimited free international roaming", and it's easy enough to just get a local SIM card if you are travelling alot or for extended time, so there just is no broad basis for instituting this change which has broader repurcussions. If there were mass popular demand for it, carriers would already offer at least limited versions of it (potentially most popular in small countries or regions where travel to nearby countries is routine). This just smells of ideological neoliberalism.
I'm bored with borders and boarders.
... The mobile phone industry remains anchored in the 90s.
We in the US have Trump (nee: Drumpf) to deal with, you guys have Brexit. Welcome to the global hangover!
If it's a global hangover then when did we have the preceding party? It clearly must have been a really good one because I don't remember it happening at all.
The two cases are very different. Your dystopic scene is in regards to the content production, whereas the common carrier comment was in reference to the distribution infrastructure.
/. agrees on what those are (namely, it should be fast and low latency both ways, with faster/lower always being better). Food, on the other hand, is a very personal thing.
For the Internet scenario, I think we all agree that, yes, it is a Bad Idea if all websites/content providers (news sites, *media, etc.) are merged into one government-run conglomerate. However, going back to food, the fact that the government maintains the roads which are used to deliver food has not, personally, been a problem for me.
Variety and choice tend to be good things -- but whatever we're doing now isn't working perfectly, as not everyone has access to fast internet. Fiber/cable/etc., like transportation networks, are defined as Good by a relatively narrow set of parameters, and I'm pretty sure 99+% of
I hear they're coming out with Soylent Green in a few months.
No, Soylent Red. Slashdot Green.
Your dystopic scene is in regards to the content production, whereas the common carrier comment was in reference to the distribution infrastructure.
I don't know why you think that's relevant since my scenario covers distribution infrastructure as well.
However, going back to food, the fact that the government maintains the roads which are used to deliver food has not, personally, been a problem for me.
It has resulted in governments deliberately hamstringing some transportation infrastructure in favor of other transportation infrastructure. Roads in particular are notoriously impaired via tolls, restricted construction, etc in favor of mass transit.
Variety and choice tend to be good things -- but whatever we're doing now isn't working perfectly, as not everyone has access to fast internet.
Not seeing how government will make it more perfect or why it matters that not everyone has access to fast internet.
If taken far enough, Romanian carriers will have to raise their prices to account for their share of Danish infrastructure costs, but that means all Romanians would then be paying those costs (while still on lower Romanian salaries) while Danish tax and government budget is being undermined.
The current situation, the prices within country aren't that much high. (a few eurocents difference in the price per minute).
Maybe a users calling over a Romanian carriers within Romania will end up paying a few euros less than an users over a Danish carrier within Denmark.
I.e.: there is some variation between countries, but not as much as you would think, and specially not as much when compared to :
Roaming costs: They are currently outrageously high.
When abroad (e.g.: the Danish users goes to Romania) the costs of roaming can be 10x the normal price (you could be paying *whole euros* per minute - even when, per your reasoning the cost of Romania's infrastructure is certainly not the 9x price difference).
The current situation isn't about asking a couple of cent more to make up for the difference in infrastructure that you mention by donating to the roaming country.
The current situation is about milking the travelling users as if they were gold mines.
(It probably made sense for the carrier back in a time of less mobility, when probably most of the users roaming abroad would be business chief-whatever-officers type which don't pay much attention to the phone bill that their work is paying)
(Nowadays it just painful for all people travelling abroad because everybody has a wireless phone, because smartphone are nearly necessary for lots of everyday tasks, specially when abroad and you don't want to lug your laptop around, and modern society comes with even more geographical mobiliy)
This happens even within the same carrier. E.g.: buy a contract from O2 Germany. And whenever you travel to Czech republic, get charged outrageously, even when connecting to O2 CZ (the same company).
and it's easy enough to just get a local SIM card if you are travelling alot or for extended time,
Cue in mental picture of an avarage european user carrying 10 different SIM cards, and using a phone that has 4 SIM slots, with 2 of them always simultaneously on air.
If there were mass popular demand for it, carriers would already offer at least limited versions of it (potentially most popular in small countries or regions where travel to nearby countries is routine).
And there are such offer : there are "virtual carrier" (that don't own their own network of antenna, but piggy back on other carriers which they have an arrangement with) who have signed agreement with most big carriers in all European countries (it's not as impossible as it sound. There aren't really that many different carriers in Europes. Most of the time it's the same few international companies going each by different name/brands in each country. - see the above O2 example - Sign just a few of those big internationals, and you have deals in nearly every country).
By doing this, this virtual carrier are never actually roaming, you've always got at least one local operator with whom your virtual carrier has a deal and you always pay the local price.
as a random example : xxSIM
The proposed law is about always forcing this situation on all carrier, no excuse accepted.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]