EU Telecoms deal: Mobile roaming charges ban in 2017

Relevant Part:<p><pre><code> 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.</code></pre>

What 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.

Can 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&#x27;t know that prevents companies from offering this service?<p>0: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slideshare.net&#x2F;Computaris&#x2F;eu-roaming-regulations" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slideshare.net&#x2F;Computaris&#x2F;eu-roaming-regulations</a>

Finally. Pre-iPhone, I was always able to use my GPRS&#x2F;3G phones in various countries for free using data roaming. It would just use my normal (unlimited) megabytes. I could even tether unofficially.<p>Then the iPhone came out, and an “unlimited international data” plan was an additional $60&#x2F;month, I believe. Basically doubling the monthly cost, and that didn’t have tethering.<p>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.

For what I&#x27;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 <i>any</i> 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&#x27;t see any reason to change my habits.

(Crosspost from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9803815" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9803815</a>)<p>The problem with these sorts of legislature as I&#x27;ve experienced is that while the theory seems quite appealing it never really works as you would expect.<p>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 &quot;pack&quot;.<p>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 &quot;roaming data&quot; 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.

This 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.<p>From what I&#x27;ve understood operators will reintroduce wholsesale roaming prices, which means that home operator will still pay for traffic while their clients are roaming.<p>This will bring us cheaper roaming but we will most likely have two separate packages - for domestic use and capped ones while roaming.

This 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 &quot;free&quot; in a 100+ countries..

Bad 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.

And for this we gave net neutrality legislation away.

Nice 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.<p>To be honest i cant back this up with arguments and&#x2F;or data. But this is what i heard from telecom specialists in the field.