EU pulls free roaming plan

Frozen_up_north

See: http://news.sky.com/story/eu-pulls-free-mobile-phone-roaming-plan-after-backlash-10570754

It looks like a mess, I guess we will have to wait and see. In the mean time Three's feel at home already offers free roaming across the EU, not sure what extra the EU were planning... Being able to phone EU numbers cheaply from the UK would be good.

d123

Frozen_up_north wrote: »

See: http://news.sky.com/story/eu-pulls-free-mobile-phone-roaming-plan-after-backlash-10570754

It looks like a mess, I guess we will have to wait and see. In the mean time Three's feel at home already offers free roaming across the EU, not sure what extra the EU were planning... Being able to phone EU numbers cheaply from the UK would be good.

If you read the article it's not free roaming that's been pulled, it's the watered down 90 days in a year proposal (probably lobbied for the phone companies) that has been rejected as it does not go far enough towards single market European use.

The European Commission's draft blueprint - hailed as an end to additional charges for EU citizens when they cross national borders inside the bloc - was withdrawn on the orders of commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker.

There was a backlash by consumer groups earlier this week when officials confirmed an annual 90-day limit for free roaming - rather than a complete ban on network providers imposing such charges.

There is a better article on the story at http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/09/mobile-roaming-eu-fair-use-policy-plan-scrapped-juncker/

Commission spokesperson Alexander Winterstein defended the scrapped proposal on Friday and blamed "misleading reports" for suggesting that roaming charges will not be abolished in June 2017—"there is not a shred of doubt of that," he told reporters.

"It was a good proposal, but not good enough for our president. The president saw and heard the feedback, and in light of that decided that this proposal was not adequate," before adding: "The president isn’t necessarily informed of all the technical provisions in the draft."

Asked whether the commission was "flip-flopping," Winterstein said: "Sometimes we’re criticised for not listening, now we’re criticised for listening!

"Our president says he needs something better so we will go back to the drawing board. Our proposals will be on time to guarantee that roaming charges will be abolished by June 2017," he said, adding that the revised proposals will come "soon."

Roaming charges are still due to be abolished in June 2017, but the EU still wants a single market open use plan, not this watered down limited time plan that somehow was sneaked through.