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Comment by blibble | Hacker News Reader

I never saw why this interference in the free market was needed when it was making progress, and in some circumstances already provided solutions to the problem

on Three I've had free roaming for years, at no additional cost, across the EU and a good chunk of the rest of the world

http://www.three.co.uk/feel-at-home

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Well, it seems clear that the market was failing to deal with this adequately. Three has had free roaming for years, correct—it wasn't across the whole EU though, worth remembering!—but the market had not efficiently reduced the costs for everybody.

You could certainly make the argument that there were other reasons that people didn't all switch to Three, but it seems more likely to me that people consider switching to be too much work. That's essentially an inefficiency in the market – exactly the sort of situation where a regulator should step in.

After all, roaming charges in the EU were essentially price-gouging of the worst kind.

Restrictions:

If you roam exclusively in a Feel At Home destination for any 2 complete months in a rolling 12 month period, we may suspend international roaming on your account, which means you'll no longer be able to use your device or allowances abroad. We'd let you know if this were likely to happen first. If you spend a full month abroad but some of that time is spent in a destination that isn't included in Feel At Home, this restriction won't apply.

You can't use your phone as a Personal Hotspot, also called tethering, in a Feel At Home destination. This applies even if you normally tether in the UK using your data allowance, or have a Personal Hotspot allowance or Add-on.

We restrict your ability to use your data allowance for file-sharing, like peer to peer download services, and using certain sites to download or share large files. This is so that we can manage demand from overseas and ensure that everyone can use the service.

The source link is horrible (and the page doesn't allow copying... I wonder why): http://support.three.co.uk/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBISAPI.DLL?Command...

Because it has taken them a ridiculously long time. Note that these regulations have been phased in for the last 10 years after the Commission first gave the industry about two years warning that they were unhappy about the situation. In those 10 years, the limits have steadily been dropped, yet most providers have avoid to the last day to drop their rates ahead of the regulation.

These regulations have been reviewed several times, with the intent of seeing if the industry had changed behaviour enough to justify letting the rules expire. Time limits were extended several times. Each time the providers under-delivered on what the Commission was looking for.

In other words: They've had 12 years. They've consistently dragged their feet, because they know that while it is a material issue when getting a subscription for a small portion of frequent travellers, most people do not keep close track of large portion of their yearly cost is down to that vacation (on average) many months ago when it comes time to renew.

Secondly because the EU sees this as a barrier to effective competition between businesses in different member states, and eliminating those barriers is a major portion of the justification for its existence.

But they were effective from the start. EU roaming was already cheap in the last years whereas going to the US with a European data plan reminds you what roaming can really cost (some exceptions apply).

It's great that it's free now but the caps were already quite effective before.

The actual agreement was done a few years ago, part of which was the "gradual reduction of roaming costs over two years".

Your point about Three is actually a reason why this agreement was needed. Why have none of the other carriers done the same? They have had years to act on this or make some effort to reduce the costs of roaming, yet remained complacent.

Don't assume the actions of one carrier represents all of them. Three is a great carrier but their market share is small compared to others. Other networks likely didn't make any efforts to reduce the costs for customers because they didn't need to. Additionally, Three's motive may be more marketing and attracting new users than simply for the good of their customers.

iirc 3 introduced this service when it was announced that these regulations were underway.

Correct. It's difficult to see if that was causation though, as Three had already had "Feel at home" in 2013 when discussions started in the EU about this legislation.

The first steps towards this happened in 2005, with the first regulations passed in 2007. 2013 is just the last tightening after the providers once again dragged their feet enough to finally get the Commission to accept they wouldn't do it voluntarily.

Ah, my bad! I was under the wrong impression then. Thanks for informing. :)

The Three changes came in response to this change in regulations.

As a relatively new operator they have always hated roaming, as it has made them less then the established operators.

I'd actually argue that Three has been in a good position to introduce free roaming as they are active in a few European markets. I'm not sure when they go from being new to established though, as I first recall seeing them sometime around 2000.

Note that their page changed today. Germany wasn't included previously, along with some other EU countries. That meant that you got free roaming in the US and Australia, but not in some of the biggest EU countries.

The new policy is a big positive even for 3 clients.

It was needed because in most countries (at least in the Netherlands) there were no telco's offering free or even reasonably prices roaming. As long as no one did it there was no incentive for any of them to lower or abolish roaming prices.

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