European roaming charges will end in 2014 | Hacker News Reader

European roaming charges will end in 2014

wired.co.uk

286 pointsmorganwilde104 comments

This has huge psychological implications, similar to not carrying a passport while crossing borders and paying with the same coins everywhere: All these measures help to get the feeling that Europe is indeed one place, one community. Weekend trips to other countries are not a privilege of the 1 percent over here, more like the top 30-50%. I love to see what is happening right now, and I'm confident it will survive any current crisis. Maybe without the UK, but continental Europe is sufficient great for me ;)

As you allude; unless you live in the UK where the media shove it down our throats that we're special and don't need that level of co-operation, integration and instead should leave the EU (and presumably be a de-facto additional US state).

For those of us in the UK that do visit Europe or wish to speak to people in Europe with Google Hangout, Skype etc. this is excellent news, as it presumably is for all Europeans.

I'd like to disagree with you, it might be true that the media try to make you think you are special but the truth is different, I am an Italian that has recently moved to the UK and I found the transition EXCEPTIONALLY smooth. Really, it is like I moved to any other city in Italy, I had no problem with documents, registration or anything. You are welcome and is totally normal to move in/out.

EDIT: I speak of personal experience, I can't really talk too much about Eastern Europe people but I have met many people coming from there and I didn't hear any specific complains.

As an American who lived in Italy in the 90s, it was a notable difference to me that people are legally required to carry papers. US law descends from English Law, and as I understand it, the different legal philosophy from continental Europe includes ideas about whether you are a citizen by your own rights as a person or whether those rights are conferred from the state or at least somehow authenticated by the state. (I'm probably getting the language wrong)

Anyway, the distinction is abstract, and probably has few real world implications, but legal requirements to carry identification, or to register your official residence are among them. It is also an issue that comes up when people are confused outside the US why we have issues around voter ID laws.

Though I can't speak to the ease of relacting between EU countries as an EU citizen, I can imagine that the UK could give the impression of being more open just because you don't necessarily have to enter an imposing building with door buzzers to obtain registration which might feel like you are having to ask permission.

I hear Romanian's and Bulgarian's don't get the same treatment (even though here in Cyprus without trying to stereotype they tend to abuse the system)

This is an issue with the UK only and only for getting working permits. I'm not sure what kind of work permits though, as personally I would have no problem in getting hired by an UK company or finding a place to rent (I am Romanian); I guess it's for low-skilled jobs or something.

Also, starting with January 1st, 2014, this will no longer be an issue.

On people abusing the system, it happens. Don't worry though, as personally I'm not in a rush of moving or working in Cyprus, especially since the bank tax ;-)

As with 90% of discrimination issues, it's about socio-economic status. A stereotypical Italian is comparatively "rich", stereotypical Romanians and Bulgarians are "poor".

I'd imagine it's a bit different from eastern Europe, sadly.

I am from Albania (not part of EU, but trying to get in), and travel to Schengen treaty countries is easy. Just show with your passport and no visa is needed. Working and long term stay is another matter.

For the UK, and some countries that are not part of the accord, I do need to have a visa, and it is PITA. It usually involved going to embassy, paying some fee, providing documents, convincing the consular you are not doing anything shady, or going to overstay, or whatever. Not fun, especially if you are just trying to do a few days short visit.

Actually Eastern Europeans can travel easily wherever they desire with a passport or a national ID card, no need for visas. Some countries are not using the Euro though, and it has protected them from the economic crisis to a degree.

Yes

I'm an UE citizen, and nowadays moving countries is almost like moving cities (Schengen Agreement is still a little bit different than the UE).

Except for the language, of course!

As far as I'm concerned, this is bigger than the freedom of physical movement within the EU country borders. Now our data will move with us!

The two are tightly related, although physical movement is more important because in absence of it you waist a lot of time to get a Visa and there's always the possibility that you might not get it, whereas with roaming charges it's only a matter of convenience and price.

Btw, whenever I travel within EU one of the first things I do after landing would be to get a PrePay card. In European countries PrePay offers are really good and sometimes better than PostPay contracts.

If anything, I fear that this will favour an oligopoly of the big ones, like Vodafone and Orange, with no real benefit to me, a user accustomed with searching for good local PrePay offers.

Yes: of course this benefits large, incumbent service providers.

Smaller providers will find it difficult to compete now that they are obliged to offer the same level of service, at the same cost, to people travelling throughout the EU.

This ultimately excludes the possibility of cheaper local services: I find it a surprising move from the EU who should act to prevent anti-competitive practices.

There's nothing saying that they have to provide coverage, just the same price.

A new upstart has Hobson's choice between: - being price-fixed locally by Vodafone's pan-European wholesale prices and therefore being unable to compete effectively.

or: - forbidding customers roaming coverage and therefore being unable to compete effectively.

I don't think I'd go that far! It's an added convenience, but my data already moves with me through the EU, since non-phone internet access (coffee shops, libraries, McDonald's, 7-11, hotels, etc.) is pretty widespread.

In my experience, public WiFi access has been getting more scarce. This is probably caused by the combination of cheaper and more widespread 3G, and the FUD from record labels that people will use your access point for child porn, and you'll go to jail.

Currently I usually buy a prepaid data SIM if I travel to another European country. But this is a bother if you're going to be there just for a day or two.

Widespread in some major cities. Last month I visited some family in a small town in Germany, and the only WiFi available was at the hotel, and it was not free.

Yeah, I'm learning that Germany is an exception. It's not just major cities in the rest of Europe, though. In Sweden you can find free wifi even in small towns, because every 7-11 and every McDonald's in the whole country provides it, not to mention most coffee shops and libraries.

Germany is an exception because there is an actual law that says you're liable if someone else uses your wifi for shady purposes. That's why our routers are password protected out of the box and almost no one will offer open, let alone free wifi. I heard from a hotel owner that this is not just a theoretical danger; he'd paid a high fine once and decided not to offer free wifi any longer.

Hmm heavy adoption of project loon in Germany expected.

Sweden is exceptionally socialist even by European standards. I can well believe free wifi would be common there, and in the rest of scandinavia, but not in "mainland" Europe.

I suppose I don't see how multinational corporations like McDonald's or 7-11 providing wifi has a socialist angle to it. Isn't that more just the free market operating? They offer wifi because they think it brings in business, and the Scandinavian countries have fairly free markets that don't stand in their way when they want to do so. The German-style regulations discouraging establishments from offering wifi through onerous regulations seem to be the more statist outliers.

Successful multinational corporations adapt their model to fit local cultures. The socialist culture in Scandanavia means people expect and reward businesses that offer free wifi; McDonald's/7-11 do it to remain competitive. I doubt it's the regulatory environment that makes the difference between Germany and Sweden - Sweden is also quite strongly regulated. And in other European countries where there is low regulation but an absence of socialist tradition (e.g. Italy) you don't see a whole lot of free wifi (or didn't when I was last there).

As a Swede, I really don't see the connection between free WiFi and socialism here. First, I haven't really perceived that Sweden has THAT much free wifi. And in Asia, free WiFi is everywhere, and no socialists as far as I can see (North Korea don't have much WiFi at all, unfortunately).

Maybe "socialism" is too specific, but there's an American culture of individualism that you find to a certain extent in Italy/France/Spain that's absent in much of Asia. Germany is... different. I guess any attempt to reduce cultures to a single dimension is probably futile.

It seems that you haven't traveled to Germany yet. Public Wifi is barely available because of legal risks and hotels still try to charge you something like 10 euro for a day of internet access. When I went to Dublin in Ireland the situation was almost as bad.

On the hotel WiFis, the rule of thumb seems to be that the more expensive the hotel, the costlier and crappier the WiFi will be.

Most cheap family-run hotels and all hostels have free and good WiFi.

This. Hostels world-wide in allegedly 3rd world countries regularly have free wifi - and fast! Yet in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, first-world western countries, free-wifi is rubbish or non-existent on the whole.

Interesting; I indeed haven't traveled to Germany. The internet situation has been pretty good in the eight European countries I've been to recently, though: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France. In a number of them the government even provides easy-to-find free internet (any library in Paris or Copenhagen, the main public spaces of Helsinki or Heraklion, and so on).

I believe the reasoning is solid: most high-priced consultants and business travelers stay at decent hotels, and the $10/day is an easily expensed item.

Sucks for those of us who also like higher end hotels for personal travel, though.

Actually the trend these days is aircards... Never even get as far as checking out the hotel wifi.

Yes, OK, if you travel to a country with Starbucks, you can walk 10 minutes (if you're in central London or other bigger cities) or 30-60 minutes to the nearest one. But we live in the smartphone age, I want to be able to use all my apps everywhere I go, the way I'm used to back home. What's the point of all those hyper local apps if you need an immobile wi-fi connection to access them.

Certain Starbucks branches in some countries don't have free wifi. (I know for a fact that the one 100m away from me right now doesn't.)

Starbucks at Berkeley St. in London doesn´t have free wifi, you have to buy credit. I don´t know the rest of the starbucks in London are the same..

So far I haven't found any starbucks that wouldn't have free wifi in London. Well, apart from the small wooden one at the Liverpool street station enterance (but that is to be expected sincie it's a, well, a wooden box:)

You need a passport (or other form of government issued-ID), you don't need a visa.

I guess the biggest change is: Nobody's checking it.

I travel without lining up in front of a police guy, showing my passport. A border is sometimes easy to miss.

Took two girls from the US to the meeting point of DE, NL and BE after Fosdem a couple years back. It's .. boring. Taking a picture there seems .. worthless. Yes, more or less just a step away from each of these countries and still - so what? No one cares, you can cross freely.

And boring is good for these things, in my book.

That isn't that different from 40 years ago. The Dutch-Belgian border has been technically open since 1944 (the BeNeLux as a customs union dates from then; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benelux. In practice, the border will have opened a bit later, as World War II was still going on)

The Dutch-German border was closed, but in practice, outside main roads, there were only roaming border controls. The tripoint of Germany-Belgium-the Netherlands lies on a hill without main roads, so one could cross the border freely there even in the 1960's.

Any valid ID (free) vs. a Passport (86 euros, in France) makes a huge difference to many people I believe !

In Romania IDs are not free either :-). If you come from an underdeveloped country (precisely where the cost of a passport can pose a problem) you'll soon find out that many EU countries won't let you in only with a national ID; they want a passport. For Romanian/Bulgarian/etc citizens roaming through Europe without a passport is not a very smart move, even if you go to countries that accept only the ID.

You may technically be required to carry an ID, but at least on the train nobody's checking it.

Depends on the country, try to travel to or from Romania or Bulgaria next time ;). Not only that they check the ID, but they sometimes check the baggage as well, and when they do that it's a sign that they will find something and cause you trouble unless you discretely pass them 25EUR...

As a Romanian national who has used the train extensively I cannot testify to that. Not once was I asked for an ID and the "25EUR" (usually much less) is for when you don't have a ticket; though I notice the "practice" diminishing.

Too bad this occurs when the Eurozone is taking the plunge :) There may not be an unique currency still left in Europe 10 years down the road.

This is still at the very high-level discussion stage. The key phrase:

"“They agreed that this time next year we will have got rid of these charges,” a Brussels source said"

Also, it's not clear how this would be implemented. For example, Vodafone in the UK lets you pay £3 a day and use your calls, texts and data from Europe. Would that be acceptable? What happens to the smaller MVNOs who have been responsible for driving down prices who now need to make a whole lot of roaming agreements? Given that data is regularly more useful when roaming than calls, will this directive require free data roaming too or is it excluded?

If I was a pan-European mobile operator, I'd have been lobbying for this. It will cost them very little to provide the service, mostly some modifications to their billing system. For those operators that only have national presence, they'll need to start making alliances and integrate systems with other operators in countries they're unfamiliar with in a different language.

Original article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...

(Edited to make clearer why a pan-European operator would support this)

> "If I was a pan-European mobile operator, I'd have been lobbying for this."

Do you mean lobbying against this? If I were a pan-european operator, then I'm making 'free' money from my customers that travel across Europe with negligible increase in costs. Scrapping roaming charges means that advantage goes away. Indeed, the article you link to has the following:

"The plans set up a clash between Brussels and telecoms bosses such as Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao, who in February called for a 'moratorium on regulation' in telecoms. He said industry had been a target for too long and it threatened employment. Neelie Kroes, the Commisisoner behind the reforms, told Mr Colao she would 'call your bluff'"

Other than that, your questions are interesting. I'm on an MVNO (GiffGaff), which uses the O2 network. It'd be great if deals that the parent networks make are simply passed onto the MVNOs but we'll have to see.

Yeah, I'd be interested in how this would be implemented as well. I'm guessing it's not as simple as "ending roaming charges" as that would be quite easy to game - setup a single-mast cell phone provider in the middle of a Finnish forest, and demand that all other providers carry your clients traffic for free. Clearly, the network in which another networks' clients are roaming must be compensated somehow, it's just that the price will be capped at some level.

> If I was a pan-European mobile operator, I'd have been lobbying for this. It will cost them very little to provide the service, mostly some modifications to their billing system.

I suspect it's more complicated than this, or they'd be more integrated already. My operator, Hutchinson Three (3) used to let their users roam in all the other worldwide 3 networks at no cost (UK, Sweden, Italy, Austria, Hong Kong, Australia, etc) called 3LikeHome, but they eventually terminated it, claiming that due to their package roaming agreements (I've had it explained to me that most operators buy a roaming agreement bundle from a consolidator instead of negotiating one by one themselves), they couldn't limit their service in those countries to only roam on 3, and customers would continually roam onto other networks and rack up huge bills thinking they were connected to 3.

I'm under the impression that I would be able to use my plan from one country in another without regard for whether I'm actually roaming or not, for no extra cost. This would include data, and would be excellent for me (at the moment at least) considering I have a cheap unlimited data plan.

I've seen it stated elsewhere that one of the ambitions of this plan is increased competition across borders, for example, operators from, say, the UK could compete with operators in the Netherlands.

That is what they seem to be promising (and we all know that then politicians promise something, that's how it's going to be). It's not clear how it will be implemented, and it's not clear why a dutch provider should honor a commitment for unlimited data that a UK provider has made to you.

Yes, and what happens if a provider in some small country sets up a limited network for very cheap with the intention of the majority of it's users being in different countries and thus other companies footing the bill.

If I understand this correctly, it is supposed to be free to the customer, not the provider. So it is not about whether provider A pays provider B if A's users roam in B's network, but whether A's users pay more to A while roaming.

I hope not - because then it means that roaming isn't made free, but rather that giving you a good deal that only works on your home network - even if you want it and never travel - becomes illegal.

This means that any business development that you can't agree with all of Europe on isn't going to happen. One country with poor 3G/4G infrastructure can block large, cheap data packages all over the EU.

No, I hope the regulation is that providers have to sell access wholesale to foreign competitor at the same rate they sell it to themselves (or national MNVOs or something) - meaning roaming won't be free, it just won't be more expensive than getting a local SIM.

Note that many providers are already active in multiple countries. For example Vodafone has business entities in the UK and the Netherlands, so those agreements should be relatively straightforward to set up.

But many aren't, and none covers every country.

I'm from the UK and have just spent a long weekend in Barcelona and made use of the Vodafone £3 deal and I have to say it made a massive (positive) difference to the experience, much greater than I thought it would.

This is compared to previous Euro trips where I feel like I've lost half my brain and even just snicking data on and off for little databursts lands you with £40 / day bills.

This will most likely not happen.

European Parliament member Christian Engström has written on the subject that this decision is just one in a row of promised proposals to lower/get rid of roaming charges. He points out that each time an actual proposal has been created, it has immediately been dropped by the same group. The current proposal is intended to be created just at the time the current European Commission's term will be up and next commission can "decide" on the matter.

http://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/article16919673.ab

I've actually a different experience so far. For example in 2009 they flattened the price of sms [http://www.telecoms.com/10693/europe-cuts-costs-of-sms-data-...].

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Now, as a European citizen based on a little island called Great Britain, I just hope our short sighted little-Englander politicians don't pull us out of the European Union.

I highly doubt they will, there's too much to lose. They're just bluffing hot air to win over support from UKIP/BNP voters.

Unrelated, but it's interesting how they describe the European Commission as being "a group of 27 politicians who represent the best interests of Europe as a whole, rather than individual countries". I normally hear them described as "a group of unelected bureaucrats". I guess perspective changes when they're doing a good thing, instead of being complained about.

The EU already severely regulate the market

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

In fact it was sometimes cheaper to call on roaming then to call for the price-per-minute after you use up all your plan. Not to mention the data

I don't know for the data, but I pay 8 times less (! 25p/min vs 3p/min) to call a mobile in foreign country than another mobile locally in the UK and only 2 times cheaper when making call in a foreign country.

I never really understood, that's just a pay as you go sim from a big player, yet it is cheaper to call a Spanish mobile in Spain with my UK mobile than the Pay as you Go rate from the same operator in Spain.

How can this happen? the Daily Mail tells me nothing good comes from membership of the EU!!

No doubt the 'Mail will be able to spin it in some convoluted manner to look like another example of 'immigrants' stealing our jobs/money. No idea how, but they will.

Well, it's pretty simple. Consolidation of telcos will lead to less C-level executive jobs, less Network Operation Center jobs, less network architecture and planning jobs, so there you have it, this measure can only destroy jobs.

I'm pretty sure the Daily Mail will gleefully inform us that as we're all likely to use our mobile phones in Europe a lot more after this change takes place, we'll all have cancer.

I like it, so headline "EU Mobile phone directive causes brain tumours and raises unemployment"

OMG you're right, the immigrants gave us cancer too! Pesky immigrants.

Dirty. Immigrants are supposed to be dirty.

The article misses the fact that telcos are about to raise prices locally in return.

Personally, I welcome this step since plans are cheap as hell in most countries anyway compared to, say, the US.

Not sure about that, it has not happened after the last few price-limitations that were issued in recent years. If mobile internet is 50-100x more expensive beyond national borders I will simply not use it, it's a lose-lose deal (that is hard for the market to escape from, due to the large fragmentation).

The telcos make a small fortune every time a business traveller runs up thousands of Euros/Pounds/etc (often at the expense of their employer's shareholders). It's not surprising if the telcos increase everyone's fees a bit if this money is no longer coming in.

And I'm fine with that. Overall, it means previously underutilised capacity will finally be used. 99% of people were unable to use all mobile broadband when abroad, despite it being cheap and abundant. Now they can.

I read somewhere in some other coverage of this reform that the measures were expected to drain about 2% from telcos' revenues. Even if they raise their prices by 5% (which isn't given), that's (a) still a decent deal if you travel ever (but unfair that non-travellers would end up subsidising travellers) (b) quickly eaten up by the continuously falling prices of mobile plans.

"subsidising travellers"? If anything the travellers must be subsidising the non-travellers now. A couple of megabytes of data do not cost hundreds of dollars to move just because you have to route through one more network.

That's true. I believe providers exchange significant amounts of money from multilateral roaming agreements, and all that potential profit has to come from somewhere else.

What I'd like to see are providers charging a low fee for travellers to use their networks. Local users will subsidise travellers less in this case.

If they can raise them (without lowering the number of calls), why haven't they done so by now?

Sounds great as described here, but I do have some doubts as to this being only good and awesome:

- If this was done with current prices, then I imagine people would rush to buy plans in the cheapest countries. Which sounds like big loss to telcoms. So, will they raise prices? If yes, this means problems for people in those cheap countries, who usually earn less too. Or will telcoms maybe lock-in prepaids to your personal ID, to enforce pricing-per-country? But then, anonymity is lost. So maybe, maybe they might introduce both as options, so you either pay more ("euroglobal price") for anonymity, or less and provide your ID? Any other ideas, anyone?

- "will mean greater competition, leading to alliances and eventual mergers" - I'm not economist, but isn't "greater competition" like exactly opposite to "alliances and mergers"?

There's a hundred operators in Europe, whereas there's three or four in the US and China. This fits in Neelie Kroes' plan to drive consolidation among operators.

Have such plans been announced/alleged?

As far as I know, there are only a handful, multinational operators with own cell tower infrastructure. The rest are more or less just resellers.

From a year ago: "M&A could help telcos close Europe's network gap: Kroes"

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-media-tech-summi...

I don't know how it is in other countries, but here in Poland we used to have 3 mobile operators, each one with their own cell towers, right now we have 4, but two of them have been bought by international comapnies (tmobile and orange).

This is great, but I fear that the big winners will be the big telcos that have a presence in multiple countries, like Vodafone or Orange. In my country these two companies formed an oligopoly with similar services, similar prices, similar everything, until Cosmote came along.

I wonder if prices will be transparent enough and 'equalized' enough that you might even be able to shop around for the cheapest country to get a number in.

I get the feeling that this will raise the prices significantly and likely keep fragmentation (it's harder to compete when all companies have the same possible pool).

This is awesome! Agree with the others here saying that in the UK we kinda feel like we're outsiders/special/loners but I think this is completely daft and I'd love to have better integration with the mainland.

I know I'm late to the comment party, but my two eurocents.

In EU it's no longer an issue to talk or message abroad even when roaming. Since last roaming cap was introduced voice and messaging has become relatively cheap. What's most welcome about this (if it will go forward becoming mandatory) is the possibility to get data abroad, which is VERY expensive right now even with offerings from Europe-wide carriers.

Awesome, because the times when I especially need mobile internet is when in other European countries!!

Currently the solution is to buy a local simcard.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that, once this is complete, you will be able to go to one country and buy a phone, then use it to make a call from a second country into a third... and probably still pay less than the average Canadian local cellphone call.

Some operators already offer flat rate packages for several countries. E.g. my operator the Finnish-Swedish TeliaSonera offers me unlimited data, calls and sms for Fennoscandia (fi, se, dk, no) and the Baltic countries.

Nice, then maybe I can get rid of some of the ~20 SIM cards I'm carrying around, and not having to research the mobile market for each new country I happen to pass by..

It's about time, the charges are exorbitant and clearly not justifiable. Imagine if americans, had to pay roaming charges whenever they drive to a different state.

I've always hated roaming charges, especially within Europe. This is WIN.

This is good news for me because my job entails traveling a lot mostly within eu.

Are international calling fees within the EU going away as well?

This proves again that Neelie gets it.

To make it clear: we all were paying roaming charges not because "evil companies" arranged in a cartel, but because some politicians (who control telecom licenses) were deciding prices and rules. Now they decided to drop some requirements and we all fell warm and happy about it. Does anyone wonder, wouldn't it be better if Brussels didn't have such power in the first place?

You are either horribly misinformed or simply trolling. The reason MAXIMUM roaming charges are set by Brussels is that the competition in the telecommunications market EU wide is not working. The main reason for that is a particular market structure: In most countries, landline telecommunication service was provided by the government, and the operators only later being privatized. The now private company could in a way free-ride on the original investment made in the infrastructure by the government, which is why an attack on the market by foreign companies is difficult. Furthermore the telecommunications industry has very strong network effects, so that the dominant natural provider could even be a sort of natural monopoly.

The licences for example for 3G/4G networks are mostly offered in a public bidding contest in most EU countries, so the state intervention is quite minimal. Unless you are suggesting government should have nothing to do with it at all, and every operator should simply use any frequency he desires and let's see what happens?

Please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_on_roaming_charges_... to see how bad the situation was before EU intervention!

You do realise that the reason the EC currently mandates roaming charges caps is because before they did so roaming was stupidly expensive???

You seem to have got the situation completely back to front.

So an American in Singapore or South Africa does not have high roaming costs? I'm not sure that's true. They have established maximum prices, not minimum.

Can you expand on this? I don't see how politicians were deciding anything about roaming charges in Europe.

[citation needed]

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