MSE News: Mobile roaming - New plans to cut cost of using phones in Europe

Roger1

Sparhawk12345 wrote: »

If you use your mobile a lot abroad then flat rate European roaming already exists on contract. I have an EE roaming contract which means I pay £5 per month more than the normal tariff ...

This means you pay £5 a month when you are not travelling?

As you point out, the tariff may suit those who use their mobile a lot when travelling. For me, it would be a good deal if I could pay £5 just for the month/s I'm away.

NFH

Sparhawk12345 wrote: »

For this £5 I am able to use my mobile anywhere in Europe (and USA) at the same rate as at home (not including data). This includes calling from one European/USA country to another, mobiles, text messages and incoming calls.

2Mb = £0.50 (24 hours)
100Mb = £2.00 (24 hours)
250Mb = £12.50 (7 days)
1Gb = £25 (30 days)

So if you use a typical amount of data on one day (e.g. 10-25MB), it costs you £7. That's a rip-off. Why should it cost an EE customer more to use data on Orange in France or T-Mobile in Germany than it costs within the UK?

jayme1

It's a joke, if I go to anywhere in Europe and send an SMS to the UK it will cost 7p but I'm in the UK and want to send an SMS to someone else in the UK and it costs 11p, nicely thought out that.

It's even more of a joke that SMS cost even 7p, 7p for a 180 characters of essentially an email, whereas if you send an actual email you can send a couple of hundred words for less than 1p, and to anyone in the world for exactly the same price.

Just tried it, sending a 1280 word email (total of 6886 characters), the email is 15kB, at the 39p per MB (the roaming max from 1st July) that comes out at 0.57p to send that email, it's actually a lot less while I'm in the UK as I only pay 11p per MB so sending the same email from the UK to anywhere in the world costs 0.16p.

As I said, a joke.

NFH

jayme1 wrote: »

It's even more of a joke that SMS cost even 7p, 7p for a 180 characters of essentially an email, whereas if you send an actual email you can send a couple of hundred words for less than 1p, and to anyone in the world for exactly the same price.

You're right, and that's why services like iMessage, WhatsApp and Viber will ultimately bring about the death of SMS which is an overpriced and extremely expensive form of communication.

d123

jayme1 wrote: »

It's a joke, if I go to anywhere in Europe and send an SMS to the UK it will cost 7p but I'm in the UK and want to send an SMS to someone else in the UK and it costs 11p, nicely thought out that.

It's not thought out at all, national rates are not under the control of the EU so are a completely separate issue.

Buzby

A bigger laugh is Scots are being told that following independence, their mobile call charges will rocket, as calling E&W will become 'an international call' and using phones there will 'incur roaming charges'!

Since the networks wholly own their own infrastructure the chances of this happening are slim to zero as the handle all calls wholly within their own network and route them to via the most coat effective method. Add to this they (we are told) will fragment their network in order to facilitate Scotland having its own international code.

They forget IoM and Jersey share and only because the current UK networks are not present there are Roaming charges possible.

Still, as the Scot Govt pointed out, the EU is planning to remove all roaming hikes so its just the usual scaremongering from Westminster. Of greater concern would be if England left the EU, and everyone down south gets hit with higher bills because roaming is not controlled! They've just not thought this out.

NFH

Buzby wrote: »

Of greater concern would be if England left the EU, and everyone down south gets hit with higher bills because roaming is not controlled! They've just not thought this out.

If England (or the UK) left the EU, it would probably remain in the EEA. Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 applies throughout the whole of the EEA, not only to the EU. In any case, I wonder whether some non-EEA countries might in future choose to join Regulation (EU) No 531/2012.

zagubov

NFH wrote: »

If England (or the UK) left the EU, it would probably remain in the EEA. Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 applies throughout the whole of the EEA, not only to the EU. In any case, I wonder whether some non-EEA countries might in future choose to join Regulation (EU) No 531/2012.

England would be about five times bigger than the rest of the EEA put together! I do wonder how good a fit that would be,.

Anyway, Switzerland's outside the EEA (but inside EFTA) and accepts most of the regulations anyway.
Don't the US and Canada share the same international dialling code anyway?

NFH

zagubov wrote: »

England would be about five times bigger than the rest of the EEA put together!

What?! How did you arrive at that? The EEA is 4,944,753 km² but England is only 130,395 km². That makes the EEA 38 times the size of England.

d123

NFH wrote: »

What?! How did you arrive at that? The EEA is 4,944,753 km² but England is only 130,395 km². That makes the EEA 38 times the size of England.

Somehow I don't think zagubov actually knows what the EEA is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area