EU may end all roaming charges

[gkeeper]

Originally Posted by andy

You might well get that impression, given the mysterious popularity of a certain party whose MEPs only turn up for work half the time, and the cowering of other parties in response, but not everyone wants to leave.

Getting off Politics and going back to original tread i presume the companies who preempted the death of roaming charges within the EU will now have to rethink there strategy, i wonder how long they will last before packages and prices are scraped or increased.

[wco81]

Most Europeans probably just roam, in limited sessions, rather than hunt down local SIMs?

Guess they haven't complained enough about roaming charges that the EU wants to make a more competitive single market.

Certainly not as loudly as the operators who stood to lose the roaming charges revenues.

[NFH]

Originally Posted by wco81

Guess they haven't complained enough about roaming charges that the EU wants to make a more competitive single market.

The main driver behind the European Commission's move to ban roaming surcharges is that the MEPs themselves suffer these charges themselves, as they work in multiple countries. Therefore they are affected much more than their average constituents.

[wco81]

Yeah but their phone bills are paid for by the govt?

It's still not clear how much power the MEP wields? Do ambitious politicians run for the MEP or for the national parliament?

Does the MEP pass binding laws or is it more advisory? OTOH, they passed this law last year and now the national govts. pretty much vetoed it?

Seems like the national govts. could have given the MEP a clue that these fanciful ideas were never going to be implemented and they wouldn't have wasted the time. Instead, months afterwards, they come back and say, "no, we can't go with this, maybe we'll do it in 2018 (which you really shouldn't pin your hopes on either)."

[wco81]

Andrus Ansip, the former PM of Estonia who is now the EU commissioner for crafting a single digital market strategy, supports ending roaming charges as soon as possible.

However, this roaming charges issue seems to be tied to the debate about net neutrality. The European Parliament is for net neutrality while the Germans appears to be for prioritization of "special services."

It doesn't sound like the EU bodies have much clout other than advisory roles on this issue. Sounds like ultimately, the member govts. will make the final decision.

In Europe, governments have taken a softer approach. This month they agreed to allow telecom operators to charge premiums for certain Internet services, such as online television, to guarantee speedy connections—provided the Internet connection for the majority of users wasn’t impaired by such deals.

That position, and a decision to leave mobile-phone roaming charges in place until at least 2018, sets up a clash with the European Parliament over the bloc’s telecom market overhaul. EU lawmakers have advocated strict rules on net neutrality that would force Internet service providers to treat all traffic equally, and have called for an end to mobile roaming fees by year-end.

For the plans to become law, national governments must thrash out a compromise deal with the European Parliament and with the commission. The commission, which made the initial proposal, can also withdraw it if it is unhappy with the direction the negotiations have taken.

In calling for “strong net-neutrality rules,” Mr. Ansip seemed to side with the parliament—and against Günther Oettinger, his fellow EU commissioner and Germany’s powerful representative in Brussels.

“We need an open Internet for consumers...no blocking or throttling,” Mr. Ansip said.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/eus-digi...ity-1427215501

[wco81]

So they announced an agreement today to end roaming charges by June 2017. Who knows after all the previous false starts whether this will stick?

Data roaming charges are set to be abolished within the European Union by June 2017, it has been announced.

The ban will be preceded by a 14-month interim period, in which companies can still add surcharges - but at a reduced rate.

A deal, reached on Tuesday, also sets out rules requiring telecom operators to treat most internet traffic equally.

But the net neutrality rules will allow firms to favour some services, such as internet TVs.

From April 2016, telecoms operators will be able to add a surcharge of no more than:
€0.05 (3.5p) extra per minute for calls
€0.02 extra per SMS sent
€0.05 extra per megabyte of data used

The cap would make roaming within the EU 75% cheaper during the interim period, the European Commission said.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33325031

So the timeline is for member states to ratify these new rules, including the net neutrality (with exceptions) rules, by December of this year:

The agreement will be presented to the EU's member states between July and December this year for formal adoption.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) - the fourth largest grouping of MEPs in the European Parliament - has previously criticised regulators for trying to water down plans to end data roaming.

But it welcomed Tuesday's announcement.

The president of the ALDE group, Guy Verhofstadt, said the "great roaming rip-off" was to be brought to an end.

The group blamed the delay in successfully negotiating the deal on member states, which have been accused of seeking to protect their national operators in the past.

But Marietje Schaake MEP, another member of the group, renewed the attack on the net-neutrality deal, saying: "The compromise reached now is a watered-down version of the strong ambitions of the European Parliament."

Gunther Oettinger, the commissioner for the digital economy and society, defended the net-neutrality proposals as a "pragmatic" approach.

[NFH]

The full press releases are:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/e...-informal-deal

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release....htm?locale=en

[wco81]

So are Western Europeans going to get some cheap Romanian PAYG SIMs and roam in the rich countries?

[NFH]

Originally Posted by wco81

So are Western Europeans going to get some cheap Romanian PAYG SIMs and roam in the rich countries?

No, if you read the Q&A, you will see "The rules prevent abusive uses: for example, if the customer buys a SIM card in another EU country where domestic prices are lower to use it at home; or if the customer permanently stays abroad with a domestic subscription of his home country. This is not the usual use of roaming as the vast majority of Europeans experience it. These unusual behaviours are also called 'permanent roaming' and could have a negative impact on domestic prices, and ultimately on consumers. This is why there is a fair use safeguard. Once that limit is reached while being abroad, a small basic fee can be charged. This will be much lower than current caps (maximum prices that operators can charge consumers for roaming in the EU) and is likely to decrease even further. The Commission has been mandated to define the details of the fair use limit."

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by wco81

So are Western Europeans going to get some cheap Romanian PAYG SIMs and roam in the rich countries?

well, this happens even today. I know several of my friends who use their german BLAU or SIMYO payg in netherlands or in france permanently because they can call the whole EU for 9ct/min and have free inbound calls. Except internet usage this is in many cases much cheaper than using domestic cards. So far only one provider in germany has a clause that limits the time abroad and takes the right to charge higher rates if exceed - effectively also not enforcing this rule yet.