MSE News: Maximum cost of using mobiles in Europe slashed again 19 May 2010 at 7:57PM edited 10 June 2010 at 3:09PM in Mobiles 3 replies 1.2K views

Former_MSE_Natasha

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"The cost of using a mobile in Europe has been cut again, the European Commission has confirmed..."

Read the full story:

Maximum cost of using mobiles in Europe slashed again

peterbaker

This is all very well, but it is long past (years past) the time when the EC should have stamped on the cartel activity that caused the roaming prices to be such a rip off in the first place (Unfair Roaming Charges Reclaim anyone? :money:)

Plus the ridiculous cartel cost of texts in the first place should have long ago been nailed.

I pay just 1.3p (and sometimes nothing if the receiving handset is also online) to text abroad using Fishtext, for example. Yet it costs me 25p to text from UK to abroad using my network's standard offering. How can that be justified given the fact that if a roaming tourist standing next to me in London texts the same abroad number as me, even perhaps roaming on my network, the tourist pays less than half what I pay??

A few small European providers wo had been charging as little as 3p per text sent anywhere from the home country for years were gradually pressured into falling into the cartel pricing structure three years ago.

The whole industry is designed to trick the customer when they are outside their normal environment, and the sooner more industry-wide borderless price caps are put on by the EC, the better I say.

gjchester

Great.

What will they put up this tme to compensate?

Would that be in anyway related to the fact that this month Vodafone and o2 have changed there inclusive data packages going from a fair use policy where if you stray over the limit occasionally you got away with it to the hard caps where you get charged for going 1 byte over the limit?

No surely not.

(Yes that is sarcasm!)

Rosie75

The article states that outside the EU, roaming charges can be "up to £1 per minute". I wish. When I was stuck in India because of the volcanic ash, trying to call British Airways for five days, TMobile were charging me £1.50 per minute.