EU may end all roaming charges

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by ronwi

The big difference with the US is that for the most part the cell phone companies are national - a California user travelling 2500 miles to New York is still utilizing the same carrier.

Actually, the EU countries beat the US to nationwide carriers by more than 10 years. It's just that there is not quite yet a United States of Europe. What they are talking about is the equivalent of traveling from Toronto to San José, Costa Rica with no roaming.

[NFH]

Originally Posted by DRNewcomb

Actually, the EU countries beat the US to nationwide carriers by more than 10 years. It's just that there is not quite yet a United States of Europe. What they are talking about is the equivalent of traveling from Toronto to San José, Costa Rica with no roaming.

EU countries have never had regional networks. In some cases, new networks have had coverage confined to a particular region within a country, but this has only been temporary while they rolled out their network nationally.

There is no company which yet has coverage throughout the whole of the EU. The most likely to achieve this are:

• Vodafone - British company
• Orange - owned by France Télécom but originally a British brand
• O2 - owned by Telefonica (Spanish incumbent ex-monopoly) but originally a British brand
• T-Mobile - part of Deutsche Telekom

Some other companies which already cover several EU countries are:

• 3 - Hong Kong company
• TeliaSonera - Swedish company