EU may end all roaming charges

[andy]

Originally Posted by wco81

But it also seems like during the years they've taken to arrive at this point, roaming costs have dropped enough that a lot of people are okay with roaming for short periods of time.

Or prepaid data has also dropping in price. Or there are products offering free roaming within the EU already.

So to a certain extent, the market has solved the problem during the sweet time it's taken the EU bureaucrats to lift roaming costs.

But only with a lot of kicking and screaming by the networks for years.

I became an Orange UK customer in 1999. Somewhere I still have the booklet about roaming charges. About 30 or 35 pence a minute in neighbouring countries like Belgium and France, about 60p in Germany, about 6p in Hong Kong - in other words similar rates to what people there paid, plus a bit. At the time Orange rates in the UK were about 30p a minute - so roaming with Orange wasn't much more than at home. Mind you other networks were higher, like Vodafone or O2 around £1 a minute each way.

In 2003 I was in Poland. Orange increased the roaming there from 51p a minute to £1.10 while I was there, and didn't even tell me. When I complained, they'd told people with monthly statements up to one date on one month's statement, and after another date on the adjacent month. There was a 12 day gap. Fortunately for me I'd got a local SIM and only spent a couple of quid with Orange.

So it's taken 15 years to get back to only a small margin on top of home rates, and not much of the time in between has been filled with innovative new roaming offers. Almost all of the drops have been driven by the politicians and the regulators.