Mobile roaming charges to be scrapped in EU

sillygoose

Quote:
“There are around 100 operators in Europe and only four in the US,” the source said. “That’s not sustainable if we’re going to have a single market and investment. Europe has less 4G mobile broadband than Africa at the moment.”

“Consolidation is not the aim. The aim is a single market, but if it means we get fewer, stronger operators, that’s good.”

That made me laugh, never mind 4G, I can easily get 3.5G signals in a shed middle of nowhere in Corfu, but 3G is almost non existent on Anglesey (just a few hundred feet off UK mainland)

Last week I presume a mast was down but I couldn't get a 3G signal in the middle of Birmingham.

I would settle for 3G/HSDPA that WORKS before worrying about 4G, I don't have time to watch 'Die Hard 8' on Netflicks on my phone, but I would like to be able to read my email and hook into the office reliably.

gjchester

NFH wrote: »

That's a ridiculous comment. So what if they are expensing it? That doesn't make it free; someone still has to pay these inflated charges.

visidigi wrote: »

Agreed!

We've got EU regional workers who if they don't travel have a mobile bill of around £8. If they travel for three weeks of the month - its over £1,000.

It will leave a massive revenue gap without a doubt, but thats because we've being getting ripped off for years.

My point was most people who travel for business will not make any alterations to their call pattern. There have been alternatives such as VOIP for years but the phone is convenient. Calls abroad for most workers are not luxuries they are what they need to do to do business.

I did say SOME people not all, but lets consider the last few times the EU have mandated these type of changes to help customers.

So far we've seen the EU limit high priced texts, lowered termination rates, forced caps in Europe, and now this.

Conincidentally at the same time these limits came into force we've also seen the loss of free itemised billing , loss of free paper billing, loss of free voicemail (comes out of you allowance now), data caps, removal of 0845 and 0345 type numbers from calling packages, huge rises in non EU roaming costs, as well as contract prices spiraling up (in part due to more expensive handsets but not only down to that)

Competion is the answer, and by that I mean real competiton, not what we have with EU politico's forcing rules in to curry political favour to boost their profile.

Consider a half inflated baloon, you squeeze in one place and another will bulge out. The mobile networks are businesses, they need to make a profit. As Jon01 pointed out something will go up to compensate for this loss of revenue.

If we look back at this thread in 2016 I doubet we would see that T-Mobile/Vodafone/Telifonica/etc will have seen any drop in profits, simply chages where the revenue comes form

Buzby

If the Tories get their way, it won't be an issue.

(They want to withdraw from the EU - which means the current voice caps will similarly be abandoned).

NFH

Buzby wrote: »

If the Tories get their way, it won't be an issue.

(They want to withdraw from the EU - which means the current voice caps will similarly be abandoned).

The suggestion was to leave the EU but not the EEA. Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 applies to the whole of the EEA, not only to the EU. Therefore why would the current price caps be abandoned?