<span style='font-size:13pt;line-height:100%'>O2 Abolishes Roaming Charges Between The Irelands</span>

O2 Ireland has became the first operator in Ireland to abolish roaming charges between the Southern Republic of Ireland and British Northern Ireland for all of it's 1.6 million customers. In addition the company has abolished roaming charges across Great Britain and Ireland for its business customers. From April 2006, roaming between Ireland and Northern Ireland will be abolished on O2's network for it's 1.6 million pre pay (speak easy), post pay (contract) customers. This means that these customers will not be charged for calls they receive while roaming in Northern Ireland.

Speaking at the launch, Danuta Gray, CEO O2 Ireland said; "At O2 our primary focus is listening to what our customer's need and adjusting our services to meet those needs. Our customers have told us that it makes no sense to pay roaming charges while making calls on the island of Ireland. This is particularly important to our customers who live and work near the border, many of whom have had to endure inadvertent roaming charges. Having listened carefully to this feedback, we are delighted to abolish roaming charges on the island of Ireland for our 1.6 million customers."

More importantly, the new all-Island pricing initiatives from O2 Ireland will end inadvertent roaming for O2 Ireland customers in the border counties. This has been made possible though a collaboration between O2 Ireland and O2 UK. To ensure that O2 Ireland customers benefit from the elimination of roaming charges and the new flat rate, customers should select the O2 UK network while roaming in Northern Ireland.

O2 Ireland also announced today that in recognition of the economic importance of trade between Ireland and the UK, from Monday 13th February, the company is to abolish roaming charges between Ireland and the UK for O2 Ireland corporate and SME customers. The all-island pricing will be applied to corporate and SME business customers from this date and they will no longer pay to receive a call when roaming in the UK. Calls in the UK and calls back to the Republic of Ireland will be charged at the domestic rate business customers pay according to their individual price plans.

Well if it's that easy, let's see a few more companies doing it. How about KPN Base e-plus. Or that cross-border Orangeclick offer could improve. And Vodafone could reduce the connect fee on their Passport scheme. Do T-mobile want to join in?

All that nice PR speak about listening to their customers..... Maybe the competition authorities have shown their teeth at last.

When I first got a mobile, on Orange in '99, calls in UK and several foreign countries were about the same price per minute. Maybe it could happen again after all this time.

What will happen in Ireland is aready normal in the 3 Baltic Republics with Tele2 (which has its network in each of the 3 countries), but it doesn't work with the other Tele2 networks in other countries. Also Omnitel, LMT, EMT have some kind of "free roamingg" AFAIK. So it's something more geographical related. I think Vodafone and 3 could do the same in EIR/UK, no idea about Meteor, are they related in some way with Orange or T-Mobile? Otherwise it will be harder for them...

Anyway, it's a small but good event, let's hope better for the future..

come to think of it, I think I remember something similar about 3 in Sweden and Denmark

...and in a reciprocal move, shouldn't O2-UK customers get free roaming throughout the Republic of Ireland?

That's a valid point, undoubtedly we could think of a few more locations where this is an annoying problem. I'm 50 km away from the Dutch and Belgian borders so crossborder roaming isn't a problem for me but I see it every time I go to Eastern Italy, the Trieste region has a chronic problem in store for people who leave their network selection set to automatic. There you have at least 7 or 8 networks that my E-Plus SIM loves to switch between.

Yeah, that's right, in Trieste it's terrible, and our "honest" operators put Slovenia and Croatia in Zone 2 for roaming (Wind and 3 only Croatia, TIM and Vodafone both), so if you leave the automatic network search it can happen to pay 1 euro/min to receive a call... in Italy!

:wacko: that would be very annoying !
so considering you are in range of three national borders, how many gsm networks appear on your mobile when you perform a network search :bye2:

if you have a phone (i.e. a sonyericsson) that shows 3G and 2G networks as 2 separate ones, you can get 11-12 networks :P

well... you can't imagine Basel with swiss, french and german networks :D

- 3G Swisscom
- Swisscom
- 3G Orange CH
- Orange
- 3G sunrise
- sunrise
- Tele2 CH (testing)
- In&Phone (testing)

- 3G Orange FR
- Orange FR
- 3G SFR
- SFR
- Bouygtel

- 3G T-Mobile
- T-Mobile
- 3G Vodafone DE
- Vodafone DE
- Eplus
- O2.de


:lol:

lol :D

I think phone manufacturers should go to Basel and test their handsets there! They would probably be bug-free then :lol:

In Trieste, it tends to be at least 8 on a 2.5 GSM phone:

Italy:
TIM
Vodafone
WIND

Croatia:
VIPNet
T-Mobile Croatia

Slovenia:
Mobitel
Vodafone Slovenia
VEGA

Right...
from my experience, the worst place that I remember apart from Basel and Trieste is the Austrian/Swiss border in the zone between Liechtenstein and the BodenSee (Lustenau/Widnau/St.Margarethen).

I remember that a manual network selection showed me:
(swiss operators)
-Swisscom
-Orange
-sunrise
(austrian operators)
-A1
-one
-T-mobile A
-tele.ring
(nearby-Liectenstein networks)
-FL1
-Tele2
(nearby-german networks, probably only echoes from the lake)
-Vodafone D2
-T-mobile D1
-E-plus

I think 12 GSM networks are enough... and maybe I didn't pick up all of them.

Anyway, I really think it's time for a change in the roaming charge trend in Europe.
Many operators have established networks in different countries, making economies of scale thanks to the single-brand policy: why shouldn't customers benefit of this?

I think I've said before, I was once amazed to get 14 on the top of the Dover-Calais ferry, and with a single-band (1800) phone - 4 UK, 3 France, 3 Belgium, 4 Netherlands.

This would be due to troposheric ducting of vhf and uhf that occurs in anticyclonic weather, where the radio wave is refracted at a temperature inversion, similar to light on a hot road surface, but still unusably low signal strength from Netherlands.
_

We might think that the networks could have done something years ago - cheaper roaming on affiliated networks, but it has only arrived recently with Vodafone Passport and this O2 arrangement.

But maybe some people can do this unofficially with a CallKey or other SIM, using call forwarding, and hope that the tariffs for this don't head upwards before others come down.

We have to hope that the joint denials and objections of the networks, that competition will improve matters without regulation, don't stall the EU Commissioner for long.

Most of the 12 networks I listed have sufficient signal strength in that zone for you to be able to register on them. I didn't try all of them and it was some time ago so I don't remember exactly which one worked and which one not.

The echo effect you reported is also common to me (I can detect French networks from above Genova, being Corse in front of me on the other side of Ligure sea, just beyond the horizon), but maybe we're going off-topic: this effect does not affect roaming as you're unable to register on that networks due to time delay because of distance >GSM limit.

Back on topic, I really suspect Vodafone passport was a move to prevent some fine from the European Commission and not to make customers happy.
In fact, seems it will not be extended beyond end of June, or an I wrong?

Vodafone plays copycat

"Vodafone Ireland is scraping roaming charges for all Vodafone Ireland bill paying customers travelling to Northern Ireland and the UK from March 14. "

http://www.rte.ie/business/2006/0308/vodafone.html

<span style='font-size:13pt;line-height:100%'>Vodafone Abolishes Roaming Charges Between UK and Ireland</span>

Following on from the decision last month by O2 in Ireland to abolish roaming charges between Southern and Northern Ireland, Vodafone has now joined in and also abolished its international roaming charges between the UK and Ireland.

"I'm delighted to announce that from next Tuesday, the cost will be the same as local rates for all our bill paying customers when they use their phone in Northern Ireland or the UK on the Vodafone network, said Teresa Elder, CEO, Vodafone Ireland. This offer is the best in the Irish marketplace because it benefits all our customers, for both business and personal use. We're delighted to announce it today just ahead of the busy holiday period, when many of our customers will be travelling to sporting events in the UK."

Vodafone Northern Ireland customers already benefit from an Ireland caller price plan which offers customers reduced rates while travelling cross border. Vodafone Northern Ireland is currently working to deliver propositions that will further improve the cross-border roaming experience for those customers based in Northern Ireland. This will be the subject of a separate announcement in the coming weeks.

What will happen with Meteor now? They seems to be a bit out of the competition after O2 and Vodafone abolished roaming in Northern Ireland. They should find an agreement with T-Mobile or Orange in my opinion. The hard life of a small, indepentent operator...

Not only Meteor.

A man from O2 UK called me to welcome me to the network a month ago. In a half-hour chat about several things, he mentioned that they were already losing border customers to O2 Ireland ...

So as mentioned above, how long before the UK networks have free roaming in Ireland? And how about some better cross-border arrangements in the areas mentioned above ...

lucky you. No-one ever called me

and what did I miss a few days ago?

3 is at it as well

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/16/three_roaming/

edit - I'm not the only one that missed it - that link is the second one - this was the first there
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/14/ro...es_further_cut/

ha ha - "based on customer feedback" - nothing to do with copying the opposition then

"Roaming charges are unfair" - Well I suppose he can always find a new job.

... but ... ""3 UK cannot do the same offer at this time as the cost for 3 UK to provide international roaming to its customers whilst in Ireland is higher," explained a 3 UK spokesman. "

Are Vodafone UK and O2 UK reciprocating namely are they dropping roaming fees in the Republic of Ireland?

They are not.

The second of those links above has a quote that 3 had spent time talking to ComReg (the Irish regulator), and we've seen elsewhere that the Irish are driving hard at roaming charges.

I'd just love to hear a secret conversation between the boss of 3 Ireland with some of his counterparts in other countries about why he said roaming charges are unfair

guys , and i thought i had trouble with the 5 networks which show near the bulgarian/greek border :P