I can't help but wonder if they solved the underlying problem, or just passed it off to the carriers. If they banned carriers from imposing roaming charges on each other to carry each others' traffic, then that could potentially work; if they didn't, and only banned charging the consumer, then that creates a massive market advantage for the larger European carriers, who can charge the smaller carriers with no way for those smaller carriers to recoup the charges from their customers.
The article mentions that that "will require reform of the roaming wholesale market on which national phone operators across Europe trade services between each other.". I'm starting to think that the old joke about XML applies to regulation as well: _____ is like violence, if it's not working, use more until it does.
Well yes, obviously wholesale rates have always been capped lower than retail rates. Now, I can't really find a precise account of what's going to happen in 2017, but I see no reason to think it will be different.
But be careful if you find yourself in Switzerland or Norway. It's easy to forget that those two are not in the EU and that can easily end up costing you a lot.
I had a layover at the Zurich airport yesterday and I almost enabled data roaming which I disabled as soon as I left for the US... it was a good thing I checked the carrier text message letting me know that every MB of transferred data will cost me almost 9 EUR!!!
I think Three is a bit unusual. They're not doing it because of the EU stuff. I know several people in Norway who use them as their only mobile service provider, by the way, which (being used to roaming fees) I found very surprising. They're cheaper and better than the two Norwegian networks, apparently.
3 isn't only based on the UK, it's also one of the major carriers in Denmark (3.dk).
edit: according to wikipedia they're a carrier in: Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Bingo. That's why this got through. If there's one thing the EU takes seriously it's the "common market": trying to ensure that companies across the EU can sell equally into all countries.
I can't imagine that being the fault of anything other than your carrier -- I'm Norwegian, and I don't think I pay any more for roaming (about 0.05 USD per MB) in the EU than EU citizens do. I visited Switzerland a few years back, and I don't remember roaming charges being much higher than in Germany or France.
The newest news says, that the first big carrier is looking for legal ways to get around this. So "abolish" might be a little to much promise.
The news behind the news is, that the EU parliamentarians likely did sacrifice net-neutrality to get rid of the roaming charges (it is rumored, that many feared that when the whole package was not voted for fast, the roaming charges would also be dropped from agenda).
So, very possible, in the end we get nothing of it at all!
Well, they didn’t sacrifice net neutrality. They created net neutrality, but ISPs can still zero-rate some sites.
It’s intended to avoid the Netflix-Verizon issue, but it still allows for unfair competition, although the ECJ already mentioned they would consider that an antitrust violation.
But you can’t say they "banned" or gave a "heavy blow to" Net Neutrality.
They created a very limited law, that provides some of the protections of Net Neutrality, but most importantly, it creates more competition between ISPs.
But, as most of the other protections of Net Neutrality are anti-monopoly laws, the ECJ might end up ruling that, if one combines this law with antitrust laws, these protections are implied.
To which extend Net Neutrality was damaged, is debatable -- and likely we will only see in the future what the net-result is. I can only see for now, that they left dangerous holes in the Net Neutrality case here, which the providers where longing for very much, because they want to use these holes to draw money from it.
Watch out for carriers in low tax EU environments poaching subscribers and then allowing them to roam. Particularly if there is any sort of discrepancy between what the carrier pays to terminate a call elsewhere in Europe and what they pay to receive a call.
There's already plenty of legislation about this sort of thing, unfortunately. For example you can drive your car from one EU country in any other EU country and your insurer has to cover you bu law(yes yes I know UK insurers only cover you for 60 days or so, which is stupid, but I think that's the UK law letting them do that), but you can't legally buy a car in say France and buy insurance in Germany. Since car insurance can be a lot cheaper in some EU countries than in others, I guess a lot of people would do that(but then again, if a lot of people were in fact doing it, the insurance prices would probably equalize eventually).
I moved from Ireland to Germany, where I was shocked to discover the stingy as f*ck data allowances that many German networks have. Sure, they have LTE everywhere, but what use is that when you are capped at 400 or 500 MB? It's like having a sports car and only being able to drive on a short track.
Now I can get a great deal in some other country (perhaps one with a low cost of living), and simply use that, with better service and lower cost.
I thought they capped just the roaming charges, isn't calling to mobile numbers in other EU countries still (relatively) expensive? My german carrier currently charges 20 times more for those.
As far as I've read that's unchanged. So roaming will be free but calling other numbers won't be. But I guess you'll see that the most popular providers will expand as smaller providers close down.
This is already the case for some carriers, Vodafone (when Passport is enabled) off the top of my head, and also Meteor. Has been the case for some time.
There has been an issue with data though, and I'm not sure the new proposal solves that. Also if you have a plan with minutes, they won't be included as minutes while abroad, you'll be charged, but at a standard home rate.
Unlikely, if anything, the US carriers will double down on roaming fees. They tend to do whatever it takes to prevent becoming what the European carriers have become, just a line supplier.
I do not know, how the US carriers fare, but the "just line suppliers" of Europe and particularly of Germany are faring very, very well! They still make tons of money for sometimes lowest-level service.
Of course, when you have much, you still can fare better and make even more profits ...
There can be roaming charges and roaming data caps inside the US although they're not very common with the major carriers. The only time I've specifically encountered a cap with AT&T (I have a grandfathered "unlimited" plan) was when I was in Furnace Creek in Death Valley. (For those not familiar, Furnace Creek is quite isolated but it did get cell phone service a few years back.)
As others have said, international roaming is very expensive without a specific plan. I left early on a trip to Europe last winter because of a snowstorm and before I knew it I had a big bill because I had used my phone in Toronto airport and my roaming service wasn't scheduled to begin for a couple of days. Fortunately, AT&T moved the start time for the international service earlier for me.
AT&T's system for international add-ons on their site is a lot better than it used to be when you had to explicitly cancel the plan over the phone when you got back home.
I'm happy enough with their offerings. I suppose there are circumstances where I'd just buy a SIM card for my old phone when I arrived at the airport, but for most purposes I'm fine with paying $30 for 120MB or whatever it is. It's no hassle and serves my purposes for a week of travel or so.
Sprint is the slowest us mobile carrier but they've had free 2g roaming in Mexico and Canada and recently upgraded that to 3G I haven't tried to use them outside of those areas (and tbh I wouldn't expect it to work since it's not gsm) but for traveling in some subset of the Western Hemisphere, sprints not too bad.
I used the T-Mobile roaming data for a two month trip this year and was really happy with it. It may not be fast but it's pretty useful to have messaging, VOIP, and maps ready to go as soon as the plane lands.
T-Mobile's free international roaming has been great. I used to always pick up a sim from a vending machine at Heathrow, but now I don't bother. 2G is fine for email, light web browsing and navigation.
In France, TMO free international was phenomenally useful even at 128Kb/s. You can't stream video, but I was able to get some data in the most remote places.
There are no rules against roaming charges, so it depends on the plan.
I believe that most plans don't have roaming charges within the United States. Mine certainly doesn't. It's hard to have a competitive plan that has roaming charges.
Roaming charges outside the United States can be quite high. I have to watch carefully who I'm connected to when I'm near the Canadian border.
Well, if you want to compare apples to apples, North American landline costs were/are waaaaayyyy cheaper than Europe's, which is what led to rapid and and widespread adoption of mobile on that continent in the first place.
> Well, if you want to compare apples to apples, North American landline costs were/are waaaaayyyy cheaper than Europe's
Wait... what? Bell used to charge me more for a basic landline in Montreal than I paid for 20Mpbs internet + free unlimited international calls + a hundred TV channels or so in France. The historical operator's plan for bare landline was cheaper as well.
That was back in 2007 so maybe things have changed, but from my experience landline costs in Canada were hugely more expensive than in France. I actually ended up using my parents' VoIP account (provided on the aforementioned plan) to call Canadian lines most of the time because it was cheaper than using my phone. Perhaps generalising "North America" and "Europe" just doesn't work in this case, though.
What I was pointing out is there is a lot of inertia that would prevent any telephone company from changing the practice. Particularly since the consolidation of mobile carriers means most people rarely are in a roaming area.
right now some genious at ATT is calculating the business case for roaming charges between US states. not like the US has anything like the EU commission enforcing rules against corporations. oh man, the billions to be reaped. and hey, how many really travel between states? and aren't most voters against the federal government and for more state-level government? make some GOP doofus to run with it, next step - profit!
Roaming in the US only really went away sometime around 2000. I would say the wireless carriers are competing pretty hard right now (what with all the offers to pay $500 to get people off their old plan and huge LTE build outs).
The article mentions that that "will require reform of the roaming wholesale market on which national phone operators across Europe trade services between each other.". I'm starting to think that the old joke about XML applies to regulation as well: _____ is like violence, if it's not working, use more until it does.