Members of the European Parliament jockeying for re-election voted for a wave of telecom regulatory measures proposed by Brussels' unelected digital czar today – including the proposal that mobile roaming charges should be axed by the end of next year. The politicos backed "Steelie" Neelie Kroes' reform package ahead of tense …

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Thursday 3rd April 2014 14:54 GMT Down not across

Abolish roaming charges

I believe that when I see it.

Considering how ludicrous roaming charges are (particularly for data), I find it hard to believe telcos will agree with that. Of course they might not have a choice, in which case are we going to see data plans again become ridiculously expensive.

Of course it would be fantastic if roaming charges were axed without hiking up current pricing structure.

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Thursday 3rd April 2014 16:02 GMT Dan 55

Nick Clegg's all for the EU removing roaming charges

So I'm sure we've seen the last of them and other charges won't go up.

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Thursday 3rd April 2014 17:40 GMT Soruk

There are already some PAYG tariffs in UK that are cheaper to use abroad than at home - abolishing the roaming charges would bizarrely make them more expensive to use.

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Thursday 3rd April 2014 18:43 GMT All names Taken

They have got it all wrong no?

What they should do (guvmints that is) is set up an auction and get every interested and prospective service provider (telcos) to bid for the no roaming charges doo-dah-thingymabob.

That way they can make the no roamin charges model far, far, far more expensive than the roaming charge model, get more money in as taxes, get more money in under the auction charges to telcos, and get the end user to pay more.

There! That is how it is usually done innit under Sgt Bilko model?

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Thursday 3rd April 2014 19:33 GMT Yes Me

Net neutrality nonsense

Hmm. Let's look at the net neutrality amendment from

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+AMD+A7-2014-0190+237-244+DOC+PDF+V0//EN

'The principle of "net neutrality" means that traffic should be treated equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independent of the sender, receiver, type, content, device, service or application. ... Furthermore, traffic management measures should not discriminate between competing services and applications.'

This is absurd. If interpreted literally, as lawyers tend to do with laws, it means that a greedy video or audio stream and a non-urgent email transfer (for example) will be treated exactly the same. Would you like your phone call to pause while the next web page loads? That's what the MEPs just voted for. Technical ignorance is not bliss.

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1. Friday 4th April 2014 11:25 GMT Tom Chiverton 1
  
  Re: Net neutrality nonsense
  
  " traffic should be treated equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independent of the sender, receiver, type, content, device, service or application"
  
  So spam filtering is against the law then ?
  
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  1. Friday 4th April 2014 18:53 GMT Yes Me
    
    Re: Net neutrality nonsense
    
    > So spam filtering is against the law then ?
    
    That would be a perfectly reasonable reading of the text. I don't understand the downvotes - they imply that people enjoy it when their Skype call breaks up because one of their neighbours is downloading something big. The text simply doesn't match technical reality. You *should* discriminate in a way that favours timely delivery of audio packets, for example; you *shouldn't* discriminate in favour of some audio services as compared to others. The language needs to be more subtle.
    
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Thursday 3rd April 2014 21:56 GMT PJI

What's this "Brussels' unelected digital czar " dig about?

Totally irrelevant. Just how many such officials are "elected" in, oh, just at random, Great Britain? They are put there by "elected" people or others chosen by "elected" people, just as in almost every other democratic institution. Is it actually relevant to the point, considering that elected MEPs and representatives of elected governments (commissioners et alia) make the final decision? Personally, I prefer some professional there to the jobsworths who seem to become elected representatives of the hoi polloi and specialise in being even more ignorant than the rest of us, except when it comes to lining their pockets through judicious or injudicious support of business interests (that have got no vote per se).

I do hope you are exercising your vote in the forthcoming EU elections.

Or perhaps you would prefer the current USA version: a plutocracy uses its money to tie up the candidates and manipulate voting qualification rules.

In fact, at this level, the EU tends to be rather more progressive and useful than the average government.

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