EU Commission backs Reding on data caps
The Council of EU Telecoms Ministers has agreed to force caps on the price of roamed data and text messages, to €0.11 and €1 per MB respectively, to be introduced in July next year. The cap on text pricing is retail, while the data cap refers to the wholesale price that network operators charge each other. That should in turn …
Oh come on, 1GB of data at home £5, 1GB of data roaming €1000! And that's going to save me from "bill shock", I don't thing so.
"The Council of EU Telecoms Ministers has agreed to force caps on the price of roamed data and text messages, to €0.11 and €1 per MB respectively, to be introduced in July next year."
Hmmm... €0.11 for roamed data and €1 per MB of text messages. That's an interesting pricing plan.
"agreed to force caps on the price of roamed data and text messages, to €0.11 and €1 per MB respectively"
Do they think that a cap on wholesale data prices will actually be passed onto the customer ? Can't think of any other time a useful saving has been passed on. It's just a another piece of Euro incompentence and shows they have no grasp on reality and shows Europe is for the fat cats and not for the people.
So €1 buys you 9 txt messages or ~1100 equivalent e-mails.
"data and text messages, to €0.11 and €1 per MB respectively"
Are you sure? I'm all up for an unrestricted €0.11 for data, but I can't see the networks charging €1 per MB for text messages. That's €0.000185 per 160 char message (plus overhead=185) effectively... cheap but I can't see the networks charging for circuit switched messaging by the bandwidth used.
What's that? You've put the numbers the wrong way round? D'oh. And I thought el reg was faultless.
"...the price of roamed data and text messages, to €0.11 and €1 per MB respectively"
I'd happily pay €1 for a megabyte of SMS!
...but won't the cap on wholesale rate just mean that operators keep their roaming charges the same, so that they can recover what they may lose because of the cap?
Hopefully no more getting back from a weekend away and finding a £108 bill from logging on twice, due to £5/MB data charges.
the biggest problem is that the telcos and ISPs have hidden the fact that sending SMS (and other format text messages) don't cost them 1/100th of a cent because they/it is all on the "back channel"... in fact, you can say more in a text in 1/100th of a second than you can speaking across the same channel...
the plain fact of the matter is that folk are paying 100x+ times what it should cost them for text messages and the bean counters are laughing at everyone behind their backs all the way to the (failing) banks :? :(
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