EU may end all roaming charges
 

EU to end mobile roaming charges next year - Telegraph

OK this part is very encouraging to hear for consumers:

But then this goal of consolidating carriers makes you worry whether prices will decline:

Of course prices charged by operators across the EU vary greatly. It would be great if carriers like TIM and Wind, which offer great prices for data and good networks, were among the survivors of this carrier consolidation.

But if the operators which emerge out of this consolidation are Vodaphone, France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and other similarly higher-priced carriers, then what?

I used a 25-Euro 10 GB package from TIM during a 2-week trip in Italy last week. No longer unlimited but with that much data, I often used it in hotels because the speeds were better and the hotels were blocking certain network services. For instance, I couldn't use VPN at one hotel but I could use it with TIM.

This certainly good news for those that live and travel within the EU. No need to try to hunts down an international sim or even a local sim, especially on very short trips.

Based on the European Commission's plans and comments, it is possible that it will cost the same to make a call to a mobile or fixed line anywhere within the EU; O2 Slovakia already does this. It would be nice if the country of one's mobile number no longer has any financial significance and becomes merely the personal choice of the user, i.e. with which country they want to associate themselves. This would be akin to North America whereby consumers choose mobile numbers solely based on the area code with which they want to be associated.

Assuming that it will cost the same to use a SIM card throughout the EU, it will be particularly attractive to have a prepaid SIM card issued in the UK:

• No requirement to top up to keep SIM cards active; one balance deduction every six months suffices.
• All the major international companies are already main networks in the UK - Vodafone, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Three.
• No VAT on roaming outside the EU VAT area. The UK opted to exempt non-EU roaming from UK VAT under Article 9(3)(a) of Council Directive 77/388 ("the Sixth VAT Directive") so that it could charge UK VAT to visitors from outside the EU VAT area who are roaming in the UK. This was enacted under Article 19 of the Value Added Tax (Place of Supply of Services) Order 1992.

It's about time, even though the costs for roaming have been brought down it's still insane how much they are allowed to sell it for.

Use of internet should be everyone's right by now.

This is one step towards less expensive roaming charges:

Scopri Vodafone Smart Passport

(I don't mean the offer itself, but I refer to the grey rectangle titled "NovitÃ*")

Vodafone UK has an even simpler version of this. You pay £3/day when you're roaming, and all your usage is charged as if you were in the UK, e.g. from your inclusive allowances. All that will happen for Vodafone customers when the EU imposes its ban on roaming charges is that the £3/day charge will disappear.

I hope so... There's also a rumour about an European telephone numbering plan. I wonder how they'll manage the diversity of prefixes and length of numbers throughout Europe...

Would they have a +4 code for the whole of the EEA? They couldn't use +3 because there are several non-EEA European countries with +3 country codes.

See List of country calling codes - Wikipedia

Long time ago the EU proposed this: Telephone numbers in the European Union - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But it's an awful proposal. Let's see what Neelie Kroes proposes in September :D

The big difference with the US is that for the most part the cell phone companies are national - a California user travelling 2500 miles to New York is still utilizing the same carrier.

Vodafone in Europe seems to be the closest to this - the various Vodafones in various European countries do seem to have the best roaming plans for Europe.

Another issue could be the ID laws in the various EU countries could be undercut by this. Right now, in Italy one needs to show a passport and tax ID to get a SIM. In Spain, one needs to show one's passport. There are probably other examples, and the trend seems to be towards more ID requirments.

Then you have the UK where you can buy a SIM card and never show any ID to anyone. One can buy a SIM in the UK an use it in Italy, but there are roaming charges so this is not a practical solution for an Italian who doesn't want to show ID to obtain a SIM. However, if anyone can buy a SIM in the UK and use it in Italy with no roaming charges at all, then Italy's ID system is undercut - just buy a UK SIM off of ebay, and you can use it in Italy with no roaming charges.

Most of the ID requirements were introduced in order to prevent anonymous use by criminals, particularly terrorists. If a terrorist wants to use a UK SIM card in Italy or Spain, he's not going to worry about roaming charges!

But apart from potential criminal use, these proposed changes should give the UK a competitive advantage over operators in many other European countries. The only impediment is the currency, as consumers in the Eurozone may find it unattractive to have to pay in sterling.

But, the UK operators might not want that business - it would likely not be an economic proposition for Tmobile UK for someone in Italy to buy a cheap UK Tmobile SIM and use it solely to make intra-Italy calls on Wind.

It depends on people's likely usage. The previous Passport option had a connection fee per call, which for a series of mainly short calls would add up quickly to more expensive than the Eurotariff, but worked out ok for a long family call in the evening.

Contract users now still have their home bundle available and pay a daily fee on the first use of the day. That seems reasonable to some of them, and perhaps they can't be convinced that it might be worth a look around if their use is fairly modest.

So for instance I've been with friends who have spent £60 for the last 3 weeks, OK for some but more than necessary for the less intense users, while I spent about £4 on a mixture of VoIP over WiFi and data and calls on a Toggle SIM, including that I could check all the daily and overall scores of the event, plus my emails, and some weather and news websites, for 3 pence of mobile data rather than 3 quid.

Ouch! This proposal is really awful, especially because it keeps most of the legacy crap like country codes!

A system similar to the US might be sufficient, albeit it would probably be very hard to introduce?

+3 (or +4) = EU (+appendages like Switzerland, Liechtenstein etc..., just like the US´s +1-system accomodates Canada, Puerto Rico, Bahamas etc...)
3 digits determine the area (aaa)
7 further digits are individual extensions (eeeeeeee)

This way all EU (+appendages) #s could look like this:
+3-aaa-eeeeeee

1000 areas of 10 million numbers each, altogether 10 billion #s.

There are roughly 500m people in the proposed area, so that would leave ~20 numbers per person. If that´s not enough I don´t know. Especially since many crazy people (like me) who currently hoard multiple numbers wouldn´t have to do just that anymore.

I'd appreciate a similar proposal, but it would imply the change of ALL the existing telephone numbers. :(

Yes :( - but once done everything would become so much easier. :)

Also it might bring some sense back into numbering plans:

I´m originally from a town of 350.000 people (Bonn/Germany). When I learned what a phone is, numbers had 6 digits. That´s ~3 #s per individual.

Later this was increased to 7 digits. Granted - faxes and offices... Maybe 3 #s per person is a little tight, but 30 per person must be enough...

Nopes - new numbers were issued and now have 8 digits. That´s 100m #s (which could nearly accomodate all of China), or ~300 #s per individual. That´s just plain stoopid/unnecessary, or I´m getting above basic maths totally incorrect.

OK, so this new rule passed another milestone and is definitely slated to take effect in July 2014.

By the end of this month, they will outline the specific implementation rules, so we should have a clear idea of what we should and shouldn't be able to do next year.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar.../roaming-charges-die

Actually, there are two different things.

They do have existing laws to decrease roaming charges every year.

But the EU commissioner wants to eliminate them entirely, which would be a big change, to set up one mobile market across the EU. The politicians like the idea but the mobile industry may not necessarily like it.

This more radical proposal may or may not pass into law. The industry may lobby heavily against it.

Then there could be all kinds of unintended consequences.

The carriers make a lot of money on roaming fees. If they're abolished, their response may be to raise fees for other services.

Here's a better overview:



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05...?pagewanted=all&_r=0

So here are the prospects for EU commissioner Kroes' proposal to drop all roaming.

Bets on Europe Ending Data-Roaming Charges Exaggerated - Bloomberg

Industry is against it but they've been against the price caps on roaming charges that the EU has been imposing for years.

Kroes rationale is that the EU wireless market should be more like the US, where there Americans can use data throughout the country without roaming charges, whereas a UK citizen visiting nearby France would be subject to high roaming data and voice charges.

EU is behind US and Asia in 4G deployments, partially due to price competition from too many carriers. Of course, on the other hand, US carriers charge higher prices for inferior coverage.

The legislation has several milestones coming up including in September when the other EU commissioners would have to support it, then to the countries and then there could be votes ahead of elections next May (for the EU parliament?).

I'm of two minds over this - while it's great that the ridiculous roaming charges for calls and data are being reduced, nothing in life is free. In fact, I think the price cap for SMS is already too low. The EU is not a comparable market to the US, because these caps apply to all carriers, including competitors. If price caps were eliminated, that would force unrelated carriers in other countries to carry calls/data at the originating carrier's domestic rate. This would especially affect carriers in countries that draw a lot of visitors. Something would have to pay for this.

I think the big operators like Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), Orange and Vodafone should act like "3" with their RoamLikeHome.

NY Times article says there's momentum for adopting this new proposal to end roaming fees:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/te...tum.html?_r=1&

But it occurs to me that even if this law is adopted, it may not apply to prepaid products that travelers would buy.

It could be like those deals which require payments from a local bank account, or maybe postpaid accounts.

So it may benefit EU residents but not necessarily travelers from outside the EU who visit.

In some EU countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, prepaid is the norm and contracts are the exception. Therefore it is very unlikely that the European Commission would exempt prepaid accounts from the legislation.

It would be anyway a nonsense :)

I'm waiting for the 11th Semptember for the new proposal for a single TLC market. It's going to be a "hot" autumn :D

I just meant in the sense that you have no-contract plans like Free in France that requires a bank account.

Offers way more than prepaid products in that country.

Thank you, Neelie!
 

EU Commission unveils new plan to cap cost of phone calls:

(Reuters) - The cost of cross border phone calls in Europe will be capped to the price of a long-distance domestic call, the European Commission proposed on Wednesday (11 Sept 2013), announcing plans to further harmonize the EU's telecoms market.

The proposal, which also suggests capping the price for users taking calls on a mobile while travelling in Europe, suggests granting the EU veto power over sales of mobile spectrum by member countries.

"The European Commission says no to roaming premiums, yes to net neutrality, yes to investment, yes to new jobs," EU telecoms chief Neelie Kroes said in a statement.

The reform is designed to encourage telecoms companies to invest more in broadband network infrastructure, ensuring that European citizens can download data from the Internet as quickly as their counterparts in Asia and North America.

The Commission also hopes limiting telephony costs in the bloc where international mobile calls vary from 35 cents to 1.19 euros per minute will benefit businesses. It said the projected 0.5 percent fall in operators' revenues will be offset by more usage.

It may, however, struggle to get the blessing it requires from all 28 EU governments and the European Parliament for it to become law.

While they would likely back lower call prices, the proposed veto could make it harder for governments to tap an important source of revenue.

The proposal includes better coordination of the sales of mobile spectrum by EU countries and veto power by the Commission. It would allow operators to charge more for carrying traffic at higher speeds.

The Commission also said it would seek feedback on the possibility of creating a single EU regulator for the industry, a sensitive issue for countries wary of losing power to the European Union's executive.

EU Commission unveils plan to cap cost of phone calls | Reuters

European Commission Press Release (11 Sept 2013)
 

Commission adopts regulatory proposals for a Connected Continent:

EUROPA - PRESS RELEASES - Press release - Commission adopts regulatory proposals for a Connected Continent

Actually, the EU countries beat the US to nationwide carriers by more than 10 years. It's just that there is not quite yet a United States of Europe. What they are talking about is the equivalent of traveling from Toronto to San José, Costa Rica with no roaming.

So how typically do the EU member nations ratify the proposals of this commission?

And do the carriers lobby their home nations to resist or reject this proposal?

EU countries have never had regional networks. In some cases, new networks have had coverage confined to a particular region within a country, but this has only been temporary while they rolled out their network nationally.

There is no company which yet has coverage throughout the whole of the EU. The most likely to achieve this are:

• Vodafone - British company
• Orange - owned by France Télécom but originally a British brand
• O2 - owned by Telefonica (Spanish incumbent ex-monopoly) but originally a British brand
• T-Mobile - part of Deutsche Telekom

Some other companies which already cover several EU countries are:

• 3 - Hong Kong company
• TeliaSonera - Swedish company

Given that the technical implementation of the possibility to select an alternative roaming provider is quite complex and expensive (no matter if realized by "single IMSI", "single IMSI+", "dual IMSI" or for data "local break-out" - all explained here on p. 8) I wonder if any operator will pursue this path or if they will prefer the "carrot".

Let's hope that at least one "alternative roaming provider" becomes available, otherwise all the networks opt to allow this instead, and will then say that it's not their fault that there are no "alternative roaming providers".

Unless the whole EU market switches to the 'stick', the few brave "alternative roaming providers" that choose to come online don't stand much of a chance in the long term and will likely end up in the same boat as United Mobile and the other roaming SIM pioneers.

Incumbents will make it very difficult and pricey for such providers to interconnect with their networks and to operate in general. A good example is the implementation of exorbitant certification fees and longer trouble resolution for third party access customers. We're seeing this as we speak in Eastern Canada with third party IPS' sharing the incumbent's cable network (an incumbent's customer problem gets fixed in 6-24 hours while third party customers my have to wait for up to four weeks to get the same issue resolved).

GSMA Group pleads to save roaming cash cow
 

The GSMA Group pleads the right to save its roaming cash cow and to continue fleecing its clients "thoroughly and comprehensively":

A European trade group reacted, saying lawmakers should focus on "increased investment in Europe's telecoms infrastructure," rather than elimination of roaming fees.

Europe required a "more thorough and comprehensive approach," said Anne Bouverot, director general of the GSMA group, the Times reported.

EC president supports plan to phase out roaming fees [UPDATE] - UPI.com

Has any carrier expressed any interest in building a Pan-European network?

The EU commission said roaming fees revenues are only like 5% of total revenues?

What is more likely, carriers trying to build networks in all regions or trying to come up with roaming agreements.

I understand that one of the issues with having global LTE devices is that the carriers haven't sorted out the roaming fees for 4G. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they might want a premium on 4G roaming fees but OTOH, 4G prices in the US at least aren't higher than 3G data contract prices.

So they would want higher roaming fees for customers of carriers outside the EU and of course try to hang onto intra-EU roaming fees.

It depends on what you understand by a Pan-European network. Given that licenses and spectrum are still assigned by the national regulators, you can integrate core networks but for the radio access network there are limitations resulting from the national circumstances. That said I know that Vodafone has integrated and unified a lot of infrastructure including their roaming hub which I think is located in the Netherlands and handles roaming traffic for all the European Vodafone networks.
The EU Commission - once again - is unrealistic in this regard. There's no unified legal framework and no consistent regulation for Pan-European networks but they demand such to be created by the private sector anyway.
I definitely applaud such efforts, but I believe it's done wrong like most things that come from our Brussels bureaucrats.

Probably on average, but I'm sure that there are EU countries with a significant higher share of revenues that come from roaming, especially those who have much tourism. Once again the discrepancies among member states are neglected by centralistic Brussels.

That's impossible because on the one hand there is no spectrum available in most countries and on the other hand there are numerous smaller players in the EU who lack funds to expand into other EU countries, which by the way do all have highly penetrated markets so it doesn't make sense to compete with the incumbants.
By this new regulation the EU will squeeze those smaller undercutting players out of the market, harm competition and foster oligopols. As a result consumers will have to pay higher prices in their home countries just for saving a few Euros during their holidays.

LTE roaming hasn't been implemented on a larger scale because it's still complex and expensive for operators while there's no consumer demand for it as long as data roaming is that expensive. Who would even pay a premium for having their data allowance eaten up in even shorter time?
Also the fact that LTE networks still cannot handle voice calls (VoLTE has still not been deployed) but require a so-called circuit-switched fallback (CSFB) to GSM or UMTS makes it quite complicated to provide LTE roaming service with the required reliability.
European operators indeed try to sell LTE at a premium, which will fail as hardly anyone needs double digit MBit/s in their pockets while UMTS still provides decent datarates in most of Europe. In the US things are different because price levels are higher than in Europe and American operators face a capacity bottleneck on the air interface due to high smartphone adoption rates and limited 3G frequency spectrum. So in the US LTE is more about taking off load from 2G and 3G networks while in Europe it's more about creating a premium service which they hope to sell at higher prices.

That's a very useful and well-informed post, inquisitor, except that I disagree with the following:
The EU's original proposal was only that consumers can choose a roaming provider other than their home network; this introduces competition which does not exist currently. Now the networks are being given a second option whereby a network can prevent consumers from choosing an alternative roaming provider but only if the home network applies its domestic prices when roaming. This additional option gives more flexibility to networks; they can choose either option.

As you suggest, small competitive MVNOs might be unable to extend their domestic prices for roaming throughout the EEA, but they still have the option of allowing an alternative roaming provider. Giffgaff in the UK is a good example. Although Giffgaff charges £7.50 for a gigabyte in the UK, it charges a whopping £450 per gigabyte in other European countries, i.e. 60 times as much. Unlike other UK networks, Giffgaff doesn't offer any data roaming bundles. Since Giffgaff does not aim to be competitive for roaming and its domestic prices might be too low to extend for usage throughout the EEA, it might choose the original first option of allowing its customers to use an alternative roaming provider.

You are right. The EU plans indeed consider smaller operators who cannot offer Europe-wide single tariffs due to their limited geographical footprint. But as you and VladS have suggested above it has to be feared that the market for alternative roaming providers may suffer from discrimnation by the large multinational operators and that it may not be able to compete as long as it remains an alliance of regional underdogs.

The European Commission is suggesting that mobile networks form alliances, similar to airlines, in order to cover countries where they don't have their own networks.

This already happens to some extent. If you look at the preferred networks on any SIM card supplied by a European network, you will find one preferred network in each country as the result of commercial agreements between sister networks and even between independent networks. That's why, for example, when you roam with an O2 UK SIM card in Germany, it will always log on to O2 Germany unless there's no signal. Most modern phones don't let you see the preferred network list on the SIM, let alone edit it.

However, when all the above changes are introduced, I doubt that preferred networks will come into play, because we will probably be able to use only one network in each country. For example, O2 UK will not want its customers straying on to Vodafone in Germany which would cost it more money.

There have been several reports that the UK government is opposing the European Commission's plans, mainly relating to licensing auctions (from which the UK government makes more money than other countries), but also with regard to roaming charges.

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/brit...rges-50012383/

http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=483485

http://www.mobileworldlive.com/repor...-telecoms-plan

http://www.cbronline.com/news/tech/n...ion-ban-011013

It is disappointing that the UK government is siding with the mobile networks, who stand to lose a huge amount of unwarranted profit on intra-EEA roaming, rather than protecting its electorate from unreasonable charges.

This isn't helped by the widespread British insular mentality that it's normal for everything "foreign" to cost more, whether it be outgoing/incoming bank transfers, comprehensive car insurance, credit card usage or cash withdrawals. For example, the UK government hasn't opted to include GBP in SEPA, unlike Sweden which opted to include SEK. I am often surprised by how many of my compatriots still believe there are customs controls for importing goods into the UK from other EU countries, even 20 years after such controls were abolished. While such a mentality remains, the UK will unfortunately continue to find intra-EEA roaming charges to be acceptable.