EU may end all roaming charges

[NFH]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

You are right. The EU plans indeed consider smaller operators who cannot offer Europe-wide single tariffs due to their limited geographical footprint.

The European Commission is suggesting that mobile networks form alliances, similar to airlines, in order to cover countries where they don't have their own networks.

This already happens to some extent. If you look at the preferred networks on any SIM card supplied by a European network, you will find one preferred network in each country as the result of commercial agreements between sister networks and even between independent networks. That's why, for example, when you roam with an O2 UK SIM card in Germany, it will always log on to O2 Germany unless there's no signal. Most modern phones don't let you see the preferred network list on the SIM, let alone edit it.

However, when all the above changes are introduced, I doubt that preferred networks will come into play, because we will probably be able to use only one network in each country. For example, O2 UK will not want its customers straying on to Vodafone in Germany which would cost it more money.