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EU Telecoms deal: Mobile roaming charges ban in 2017
- doque 11y agoRelevant Part: Roaming will be banned in 2017, and from April 30, 2016, surcharges for roaming will be capped at a maximum of €0.05 per minute for calls, €0.02 for SMSs and €0.05 per megabyte for data.
- contingencies 11y agoSo in fact €1 = 20MB, or assuming a typical instagram image is 250KB, 80 instagram images. That's still pricey in my book. Background app updates... 200MB please, that's going to be €10.
- rdeboo 11y agoIn the past it was not uncommon to get a €100 bill if you used your phone on vacation like you do at home. But it has become cheap enough that you do not really have to worry about it when you are on holiday for a week or two. I normally only update apps over wifi.
- visarga 11y agoI use it for news, but for video and maps with satellite view it's too pricey.
- cjrp 11y agoThat's only the cost until it goes away entirely in 2017, and it's still an improvement on what's being charged at the moment.
- furyg3 11y agoThis is only for the transition period from 2016 to 2017, when there will be no roaming fees.
- CaptainZapp 11y agoYou're aware that data roaming in Asia (Thailand, for example) can hit you with 20$ per MB and no. That's not a spelling error.
- de_Selby 11y agoThe fact the roaming in other countries is more expensive doesn't make it any cheaper
- masklinn 11y agoThe point is that international roaming is generally expensive right now, the EU is now mandating a transitioning plan to free roaming with an intermediate rate cap which is most likely an improvement over existing EEA rates (my ISP's lowest EEA rate at the moment is 0.06€/MB)
- hackerboos 11y agoGet a local sim and pay 330baht/month for 3GB.
- CaptainZapp 11y agoThat's what I always do, when in Thailand. Alas, you can't get a subscription as a foreigner (or at least, not easily). But you can get a relatively cheap, pre-paid SIM, which works just fine. A lot of vendors at BKK (or any other airport) will be more than happy to sell them and configure your phone in the process. They're also quite useful for reasonably priced phone calls home if you don't want to dicker with Skype and they can be topped up at just about every grocery store. Anyway: Thank you for the tip. May it be useful to other travellers.
- andmarios 11y agoIt doesn't make clear though if you will be able to use your program with roaming from April 2016 —they say explicitly you will be able from 2017. Data charges without a data-plan are very expensive. Also it isn't still clear what will happen on prepaid card numbers, which many people choose as the only way to have a pay as you go service with reasonable charges.
- znq 11y agoJune 2017 to be precise.
- benguild 11y agoFinally. Pre-iPhone, I was always able to use my GPRS/3G phones in various countries for free using data roaming. It would just use my normal (unlimited) megabytes. I could even tether unofficially. Then the iPhone came out, and an “unlimited international data” plan was an additional $60/month, I believe. Basically doubling the monthly cost, and that didn’t have tethering. THEN, they got rid of that altogether, and ever since it’s been a scramble in every country to buy a SIM card just to pay local rates and not get ripped off. It’s all the same internet… if you’re not at home and roaming agreements exist, the carriers should just be forced to pay each other fair rates.
- JohnDoe365 11y agoThe downside is that a majority will have to pay higher overall fees for the benefit of a minority (those travelling regularly aboard) Rather unfair.
- benguild 11y agoScaled across millions of people the difference will be next to nothing. They're inflating the prices exponentially because "everyone else is doing it".
- solomatov 11y ago>The downside is that a majority will have to pay higher overall fees for the benefit of a minority (those travelling regularly aboard) I am 99% sure that for most of the phone companies a call in a home country and outside of it costs the same. Especially, for companies with subsidiaries all over the world such as vodafone and tmobile
- aikah 11y agoMaking SMS "free" didn't make plan prices go up.
- wrboyce 11y agoMaybe it was different in the states, but this legislation applies to the EU and I can definitely remember paying ridiculous roaming charges in Europe pre-iPhone (on my Nokia E71!).
- CraigRood 11y agoWhat should be mentioned is the single market where using a SIM card from another EU country could turn out cheaper than using a domestic one.
- skrause 11y agoNo, because the new deal allows telcos to limit the free roaming usage to prevent this exact scenario.
- maccard 11y agoThree [1] exists in both the UK and Ireland, and has an "all you can eat" bundle [2] in Ireland, for €20/month, but their closest deal in the UK is £17.00/month on a 12 month contract. They also provide a "Like Home" service, where your bundles apply outside your home country, so I can use my UK mobile data/text/call allowance in Ireland and Vice versa. Despite not having roaming rates, It's still cheaper for me to use my UK sim here and have a separate one for home, as calling the UK from Ireland or vice versa on a phone incurs costs that aren't part of the standard bundles. [1] http://www.three.co.uk/ http://www.three.co.uk/ http://www.three.ie/ http://www.three.ie/ [2] http://www.three.ie/eshop/sim-only-plans/prepay-sim-only/ http://www.three.ie/eshop/sim-only-plans/prepay-sim-only/
- wrboyce 11y agoThe contract you mention is also available on a 30 day contract at £20/month. I picked one up this week for my upcoming trip to the states.
- Yetanfou 11y agoFor what I'm concerned this is water down the bridge. The many years of excessive roaming fees have conditioned me to either switch of data altogether - relying on wifi instead - or use a local SIM when going abroad. As this still is a lot more affordable and I still fail to see the grounds for any extra fees when using a network owned by the same company which happens to lie on the other side of an arbitrary border I don't see any reason to change my habits.
- lmb 11y agoCan anyone shed some light what happened to alternative roaming providers? [0] Seems like they are the perfect solution to affordable EU wide roaming, but nobody is doing it. Is there something I don't know that prevents companies from offering this service? 0: http://www.slideshare.net/Computaris/eu-roaming-regulations http://www.slideshare.net/Computaris/eu-roaming-regulations
- jackgavigan 11y agoWell, the EU decided that it was going to ban roaming charges! The only reason customers would sign up to ARPs is to avoid expensive roaming charges. It's been apparent since before the ARP/LBO legislation came into effect that the EU was planning to eliminate roaming charges altogether within a few years. So, potential ARPs were faced with the prospect of operating for just a couple of years before their market effectively vanished. It also didn't help that the mobile network operators dragged their heels on entering into agreements with the ARPs that did try to enter the market.
- kawsper 11y agoMy Danish phone company 3 (which does business in a lot of different countries as well) offers a service called 3LikeHome. 3LikeHome lets you roam in 18 different countries, the data used is taken from your allowance, and you can call home for normal price. I am a dane living in London, and even though they say it isn't for longer stays abroad, I have been using my danish number in the UK for over a year without any issues. I guess there is no reasons for alternative roaming provides when regular phone companies makes these changes themselves.
- sorenbs 11y agoAlso a dane living in London using 3. It works great. Only downside is calling UK numbers at billed as if I was calling from Denmark.
- Symbiote 11y agoDid 3 work well in Denmark? I'm emigrating in August, and my experience with Three.co.uk in London was terrible (congested network, impossible to load a map or email when I most needed it).
- TeeWEE 11y agoNice idea in politics, in practice it will take much longer to be fully implemented. The mobile grid system in Europe is so scattered and non integrated, that technically this is not simple to achieve within a year. To be honest i cant back this up with arguments and/or data. But this is what i heard from telecom specialists in the field.
- bbrazil 11y agoThis has been in the works for years, so telecoms have had plenty of time to get ready. They've also been offering much better roaming rates the past few years within Europe.
- TeeWEE 11y agoI think the main problem is that the prices telecom providers have to pay for roaming data will be higher, than the selling price to customers, resulting in losses for telecom providers. The only way to counter that is increasing domestic prices. Brussels makes rules, but doesnt understand the market and industry.
- kalleboo 11y ago> the prices telecom providers have to pay for roaming data will be higher, than the selling price to customers Aren't those regulated by this as well? I remember the first EU data roaming regulations targeted only what the operators charged each other rather than what they charged the customers, so there's precedent at least.
- rsynnott 11y ago> I think the main problem is that the prices telecom providers have to pay for roaming data will be higher, than the selling price to customers Most of the telecoms won't be paying at all, except as an independent exercise; they're nearly all owned by one of about five companies (or else are MVNOs who are already accustomed to paying for data etc for their customers).
- legulere 11y agoAnd for this we gave net neutrality legislation away.
- edent 11y agoIf you read the factsheet - http://europa.eu/!hB73fv http://europa.eu/!hB73fv - it has reasonably strong NN protection.
- makeitsuckless 11y agoBS. There's no "reasonably strong" Net Neutrality, just like there isn't "a little bit pregnant". This is not net neutrality, this is a sham. It's full of deliberate vagaries and loopholes, and is specifically designed to kill the real net neutrality as it exists in my country, the Netherlands. The new telecom law is specifically anti-Net Neutrality, designed to stop any more member states from adopting it, and overrule those that already have. The Netherlands will vote against (government already announced that), but it won't matter. We'll be overruled. Once again we'll lose yet another bit of freedom to the corrupt EU.
- laacz 11y agoThis will bring consequences, since, for example, package for uncapped unthrottled unlimited data+calls+messages is 19.94€ (Latvia), which is much cheaper than same packages in other countries. From what I've understood operators will reintroduce wholsesale roaming prices, which means that home operator will still pay for traffic while their clients are roaming. This will bring us cheaper roaming but we will most likely have two separate packages - for domestic use and capped ones while roaming.
- anovikov 11y agoBad that it is delayed by 5 months, a year ago it was planned to happen since mid January 2017. Good that they also introduced another intermediate tariff reduction since April 2016, which gets calls cheaper by at least 4x. After this, personally i will no longer care about what it costs, it is cheap enough.
- acrooks 11y ago(Crosspost from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9803815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9803815) The problem with these sorts of legislature as I've experienced is that while the theory seems quite appealing it never really works as you would expect. Canada did a similar thing a couple years ago. The CRTC imposed a law where an individual could only incur a maximum of $50 in data overage charges locally, and $100 when roaming. I was ecstatic when this was announced. And then one month I went over on data by $50. And then my data was cut off until I bought a "pack". So yes, your phone bill will be unsurprising at the end of the month, but now your carrier will expect you to purchase a bucket of "roaming data" in the form of an add-on or package to your regular phone plan so that you can post your selfies with the Eiffel Tower in real time.
- anonu 11y agoThis is a step in the right direction. The initial intent of GSM was to have a phone you could take anywhere in the world - and it would just work. Instead, companies and countries erected huge hurdles to true roaming with high voice and data costs. This will work - very similarly to how T-Mobile in the US has made data roaming "free" in a 100+ countries..