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EU Announces Deal To End All Wireless Roaming Charges (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the major-win dept.

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.

4 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Just one more thing by andrewa · · Score: 4, Informative

    that we Brits will miss out on...

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  2. It had to happen some day with more HTTPS use by SciFurz · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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    1. Re:It had to happen some day with more HTTPS use by NotInHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      HTTPS can be cached. Usually CDNs do precisely this. For caching content on the local disk, its unchanged as well. And in corporate networks, its possible to have MITM'ing proxies, adding certificates to the trust store. Everything still possible.

  3. Re:No Limits Roaming = Lowest Common Denominator by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Normal people don't need "unlimited free international roaming", and it's easy enough to just get a local SIM card

    Allow me to explain Europe to you. Within 2 hours in the car I can travel to 4 different countries, going straight through one of them. Within 2 hours in a plane and for the cost of an averagely good meal (35eur) I can fly across half of the continent. On the way to work every day I see cars and trucks with a myriad of license plates from all over. Many people I know have relatives in other countries. Everyone I know country hops from holiday to holiday. I actually know a few people who commute between countries daily for work, and they get to work faster than I do.

    Just how many SIM cards do you expect us "normal" people to buy?