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 ;)
This is still at the very high-level discussion stage. The key phrase:<p>"“They agreed that this time next year we will have got rid of these charges,” a Brussels source said"<p>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?<p>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.<p>Original article: <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/telecoms/10119159/EU-to-end-mobile-roaming-charges-next-year.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...</a><p>(Edited to make clearer why a pan-European operator would support this)
This will most likely not happen.<p>European Parliament member Christian Engström has written on the subject that this decision is just one in a row of promised <i>proposals</i> 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.<p><a href="http://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/article16919673.ab" rel="nofollow">http://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/article16919673.ab</a>
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.<p>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.
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<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_roaming_regulations#Prices" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_roaming_reg...</a><p>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
The article misses the fact that telcos are about to raise prices locally in return.<p>Personally, I welcome this step since plans are cheap as hell in most countries anyway compared to, say, the US.
Sounds great as described here, but I do have some doubts as to this being only good and awesome:<p>- 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, <i>maybe</i> 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?<p>- "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.
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.<p>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 <i>especially</i> need mobile internet is when in other European countries!!<p>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.
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?