re: raising domestic charges
I doubt they'll raise domestic charges by much even if they do so. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth by the networks about just such a scenario before the previous staged reductions in roaming voice and texts, and surprise surprise, domestic prices didn't rise noticeably beyond those extremely small (but very noisily protested nevertheless) rises on people in contract - in my case 80p on a 30 quid pm contract. Considering they had been threatening the likes of charges for voicemail and incoming calls, that hardly stacks up to the threat.
Mobile is very, very price sensitive as the networks know very well. 3G didn't catch on fully till almost a decade after the auctions because of the networks price gouging; they're trying to pull the same thing with 4G, and that will fail too because we're not prepared to pay the premium for comedy data allowances. The rise in the use of sim-only short contracts, with consumers buying their own handsets, exposes the relative lack of value in mobile pricing even further. The networks are stuck between a rock and a hard place; consumers simply won't pay more, and the networks know it.
Short of handing over brown envelopes to stop regulatory caps, all they have is empty threats and chest beating rhetoric on where they'll claw revenue lost to caps back. And on that, everyone from the regulator down to the punter has their number and they know it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
