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Comment by Alf_InPogForm | Hacker News Reader

Don't the telecoms companies make huge profits on roaming fees? Would this then mean that the companies would be pushing against this move?

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Europe has already imposed increasingly more strict caps on roaming fees and many operators now offer a one-off fee per month for europe wide 'tariff transfer' to take your free included minutes with you as you travel - they get more from that fee than they do from roaming fees. This sounds like the final removal of roaming fees altogether - remember in Europe you do not pay to /receive/ calls in your home area unlike the US & Canada so it is a bit of an anomaly to have roaming fees for receiving calls when you move around the EU.

Of course, the roaming fees /outside/ Europe are now eye-watering.

I think you are confused ;)

They'll continue to charge roaming fees anyway, right up until they lose a lawsuit over it. Why would they do anything else?

Why would they lose a lawsuit over it?

Because if the EU becomes a single telco market there is no justification for intra-EU roaming fees: the market itself is the "home network" and roaming fees are specifically when the device is outside its home network.

Because that company which is operating a network across several EU countries (which is one market) is, among other things, discriminating against users based on their location in the EU.

Remember that the EU was "born" with the main objective of creating a "single market" through the standardisation of laws across all member states.

Well, yes, if it's the same company across the different countries, but supposedly there will still be a lot of carriers that only serve a country or two, so roaming will still be common, no?

I expect they will do at the EU level what many countries already do internally: cheap "handoff" between operators (where one operator essentially becomes virtual in a zone where it has no physical coverage), so the user isn't impacted.

FWIW MVNO (operators with no physical network and leasing network time) are already very common in the EU.

Essentially roaming disappears for everybody within the EU. Either because (i) if you are a large telco and your network has merged with other ones; (ii) if you are a small MVNO your network agreement subrogates to the new merged network.

Still, there is some lobby going on in the EU which wants to detach operators from the network, and make the network independent from everybody. NetCo + OpCo != TelCo.

I really hope this last scenario happens. But it's a bit of a utopia.

I'm not an expert, But I'd imagine the opportunities for growth would override the desire to preserve revenue from roaming.

It differs a lot between different companies. Some have a LOT of roaming income, some not much at all.

Yup. 30MB for £15 a month! Wow, thanks Orange. >:(

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