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Comment by morganwilde | Hacker News Reader

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!

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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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:)

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.

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