Item — HN Reader

Roaming charges: I predict the telecomms will be increasing their general charges to make good losses on roaming.

"Infrastructure and spectrum are expensive, and these costs need to be recouped somehow. Right now, the mobile operators are a bit stuck into low domestic data prices. So the money has to be clawed back from roaming customers instead".

The reversal of this policy will mean that the non-traveling public will subsidize travelers. Great for those voting and attending the EU Parliament among others. Not so hot for the rest.

2 comments

Possible, but I would say it will rather create a much fiercer competition: Differences between domestic rates and non-domestic rates are what kept the European Telecoms market from becoming truly European. As a German, the only viable option if I am spending most my time within Germany was to go with a German carrier. Now with the removal of roaming charges, the EU becomes the domestic market and in principle I could shop around other EU countries to find the best deal. Austria for example has some really good deals, so maybe I will go with a carrier from there. And with SEPA even billing should not be an issue.

The other (intended) thing this will spur is further consolidation of the EU Telecoms market as there will suddenly be a much larger number of competing players on the market. As I said, in principle Austrian Telecoms are now for the first time directly competing for customers with Spanish Telecoms in Germany, so I guess we'll see a lot more mergers in the close future. Which might turn out to be anticompetitive in the long run, mind.

I'm pretty sure that higher prices for international calls have not been abolished, though, which puts a dent in the idea of shopping around for the best deal.

Though, I suppose you could buy multiple SIMs and switch them around as needed now.

To my understanding calls from your own country to another EU country are also covered by this: http://ec.europa.eu/news/science/130916_en.htm

The quote: >International call charges would be capped at the price of a long-distance domestic call and intra-EU mobile calls at €0.19 per minute (plus VAT).

Ah, I'm glad to be proven wrong on this one!

Still, it's a cap not a complete abolishment so there's still some work to be done.

> The reversal of this policy will mean that the non-traveling public will subsidize travelers. Great for those voting and attending the EU Parliament among others. Not so hot for the rest.

Am... not really. It just means that the travelling public won't subsidize the locals, i.e. that everybody will pay as much as they use.

Also, I don't believe that infrastructure is expensive (once it is set up), and in any case, if either the infrastructure or the spectrum become too expensive, the governments can nationalize the infrastructure and offer it for rent to multiple carriers (so that competing carriers don't need to build their own infrastructure - some countries already do that), and/or reduce the spectrum prices.