EU may end all roaming charges

[wolfbln]

Yes it seems that the telcos (or cellcos) have won this round..... They had too many poins on their side: markets in Europe are still organized nationally, licenses are auctioned country by country a.s.o. One has to admit that Europe is only good to tear down borders if it's good for business. But it's another story, when you can actually make big money by borders like here. Then the spirit of Europe is just an idea (or illusion).

So I think we will see a further gradual lowering of the rate caps for roaming like they did in the past. But no ban on roaming charges altogether. Some providers may scrap incoming roaming (which is really minimal nowadays) voluntarily. But the rest is still big, big money.

The best example are data: EU cap stands at 20c/MB plus tax. And most of the offers are just below the cap. So they sell you 1 MB for about 23c or 1 GB for 230€. Average price in package for domestic use in Europe ranges 5-20€ per GB (mostly around 10€). So the roaming cap is the 23-fold of the average domestic price for data.

In Germany some providers actually use this as a marketing scoop: They "promise" to sell you data for the same rate domestically and within the EU. They do this with a trick: The standard or default domestic rate is put so high (at around 23c/MB) that it matches the EU cap rate. No word of packages, of course. I think that was their strategy to undermine a roaming surcharges ban, if it had been ordered by law.

We still have a long way to go on this continent. But there must remain something, you do better somewhere else LOL