[VladS]

Originally Posted by NFH

Let's hope that at least one "alternative roaming provider" becomes available, otherwise all the networks opt to allow this instead, and will then say that it's not their fault that there are no "alternative roaming providers".

Unless the whole EU market switches to the 'stick', the few brave "alternative roaming providers" that choose to come online don't stand much of a chance in the long term and will likely end up in the same boat as United Mobile and the other roaming SIM pioneers.

Incumbents will make it very difficult and pricey for such providers to interconnect with their networks and to operate in general. A good example is the implementation of exorbitant certification fees and longer trouble resolution for third party access customers. We're seeing this as we speak in Eastern Canada with third party IPS' sharing the incumbent's cable network (an incumbent's customer problem gets fixed in 6-24 hours while third party customers my have to wait for up to four weeks to get the same issue resolved).