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.<p>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.
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!!!
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.<p>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).<p>So, very possible, in the end we get nothing of it at all!
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.
So from what I understand, this means that when I roam in the United Kingdom on an Irish sim, I get no extra roaming charges, which is great.<p>Does anyone know if this has any effect on calls/texts to other countries?
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!