EU mobile roaming rules to save customers billions in bills Mobile carriers are poised to see a significant hit to their bottom lines with the looming rollout of new rules on roaming charges. According to analysts with Juniper Research, the 2017 introduction of the EU ban on roaming charges will eliminate more than a quarter of roaming revenues. "Operator-billed mobile roaming …
Don't pity the poor carriers, loosing money from EU roaming charges. They'll make up the loss by jacking up non-EU roaming.
Don't believe me? The carriers are already decreasing EU roaming charges and increasing non-EU roaming charges.
You thought roaming chargers were expensive before? You ain't seen nothing yet!
As much as the EU and US would like their laws don't extend to the rest of the world. So, all they can do is regulate roaming charges within the EU.
What always surprised me is that very few of the operators ever attempted to seriously provide competition by using sister networks to eliminate roaming charges entirely. Vodafone Passport was a kind of half attempt at it.
There was the only operator I ever saw take that very seriously.
The likes of Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Telia-Sonera and so on all owned networks in multiple EU countries and smaller operators could easily have formed a roaming alliance to facilitate their customers.
They'll also have some process where unless you pay extra (say, equivalent to the old roaming rates) the data rate will be so slow as to be virtually unusable. Certainly that's been my experience when abroad using the Three 'feel at home' 'free' roaming data - can almost watch the individual bits roll in. Fine for me checking email and looking up restaurant reviews mind.
Also I believe that the providers are allowed to impose a fair use limit. If so, I would imagine that to be set to .. ooh .. a generous 10Mb/day maybe? Hopefully you catch it and turn roaming data off before it kicks into the out-of-tariff data rates...
"They'll also have some process where unless you pay extra (say, equivalent to the old roaming rates) the data rate will be so slow as to be virtually unusable. Certainly that's been my experience when abroad using the Three 'feel at home' 'free' roaming data"
How do you pay Three extra for roaming in their free feel at home countries? Or are you saying the Three purposely make their roaming partners impose bandwidth speed limitations on their networks to Three customers just so you'll think that both Three and the local network are crap?
It won't matter that Vodaphone will be able to shaft us again, because once all these countries with lots of sunshine and poor economies realise they can charge us for visas, it'll be back to Skegness and Margate for our holidays. (And all the mates I would be able to stay with will get sent back to Blighty anyway).
Oh well, was nice while it lasted.
The problem with the thrust of the post and the report on which it purports to report is that it assumes the view that everything else will be the same only there will be a loss of revenue. A bean counter's perspective: change is always to be resisted because we lose.
Another perspective is that things will not remain the same and people will increase their use of mobile phones. I would not and never have used my mobile outside the UK except in exceptional circumstances because of the additional costs, costs I can avoid with only modest effort (finding a WiFi point for example). If people like me know there will be no further charges for the privilege of making mobile call while in another EU member state, traffic may increase, perhaps to a level that compensates for the loss of roaming charges.
Three's Feel at Home works fine for me in France. They don't allow tethering but otherwise I always find a partner network with good service.
A good alternative is to buy a local sim when you travel, but as there are many 4G bands UK phones usually won't provide 4G service in the USA, China etc.
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