EU comission to limit roaming-SMS price to € 0,11-0,15 on Sept 23rd

[inquisitor]

Heise reported today, that Vivane Reding, the current European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, will finally regulate roaming-SMS prices for customers on September 23rd. The cap proposals of the national regulation authorities range between € 0,11 and € 0,15 before tax. However it is expected the limit to be set on the lower end of this range, as well as all 26 commissioners to agree.
After the European parlament' and the memberstates' approval, which is expected for December, the new rates could apply early next year.

So it seems like SMS while roaming will soon cost € 0,15 (with tax) within the EU. That's less than O2 charges me for national SMS on my postpaid contract (I currently would pay € 0,19 if there wasn't Betamax)!

[gmmour]

Next step to limit extraterrestrial charges on data roaming. Now that data services are becoming more important all over the world with innovative products like data cards and iPhone-like terminals!

[fedeprovenza]

Yes, it's incredible but true. Great Viviane

[andy]

I'm not all that impressed. I think it should be cheaper still, maybe 5 cents, and this is like giving networks permission not to bother

I really hope O2 UK won't increase their charges to that level. At the moment, contract inclusive texts are still used up while roaming, though 4 times faster. And to other countries cost me 12 pence recently, same while roaming as at home (from and to Germany). I'd rather keep those higher to still have the free ones, and I think many people would be happy to see that sort of offer

[Dubrock]

In holland some providers argued that the national rates will go up now. They have to earn their money somewhere. If that will be the case I'd rather have high interntaional rates and use my international cards and sms programms instead.

[DRNewcomb]

I'm wondering how carriers can justify the high charges for SMS? Their markup for this product is just breathtaking and the customers now have so many cheap alternatives, including e-mail, Betamax, IMs and the alternative SMS services (e.g. smsBug, FishText). One would think that competition would force them to lower their prices or face loss of the business.

[inquisitor]

Most consumers are unable or unwilling to use alternatives and the fact people pay those € 0.19 for 160 bytes justifies the price. Transfering one Megabyte by SMS would so cost € 1245,18
But at least here in Germany a lot of people are guided by the highly subsidized handset prices when closing a contract while disregarding the tariffs.

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

But at least here in Germany a lot of people are guided by the highly subsidized handset prices when closing a contract while disregarding the tariffs.

And I thought the Germans would be smarter than us Americans.

[Effendi]

Well in Italy we nearly have no subsidized handsets, if not with some more expensive postpaid contracts, and people send really A LOT of SMS, but they still kept on increasing the rates to 15 cent for national, 30 cent international (except Wind) and 50 cent for roaming in EU (Wind).
Carriers just get TOO much money from SMS since people are too much used to send them and they will never stop... Here in Italy we don't have included texts in postpaid contracts, we just have some prepaid bundles of texts to the same operator's numbers. And they don't work while on roaming. So Reding's proposal is great for all italians traveling abroad.

[VladS]

Over here in Canada and even the US, I see an increasing number of people migrating from plain old SMS service to mobile IM services, either provided by the operator or third parties over packet radio (Fring, MSN Live Mobile etc).

I have yet to see a similar move in Europe where wireless data has been quite affordable for years now. I've seen people who would rather carry a second phone just to be able to SMS their circle of friends using products similar to those offered by Aldi in Germany(€0.03/each to other Aldi customers).

While I don't personally SMS that much (10-20 SMS/year is a lot), I jumped into the Fring bandwagon and love it.