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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, the telcos have already found a way out. They simply remove EU roaming from their standard subscriptions and it now becomes an add-on.

So if you want to use your phone in a different country during the holidays, you'll need an EU roaming subscription.

The politicians once again failed to be sufficient precise in formulating a law that would produce the decided result. They should have added a clause that state that all subscriptions are to cover the entire EU.

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You are probably way too negative. Yeah, some telcos are looking for ways around it, and some plans will become a bit more expensive, temporarily. However, there is healthy competetion in most European telecoms markets. So it is very likely that over the mid term, competition will push prices down.

Why is it so damn hard to be happy about a giant step forward, just because it doesn't happen in the most perfect way? (what does?!).

It's particularly those telcos who are already extremely competitive (mostly, the Nordics) who particularly need to start looking at these ways around, because otherwise they'll be subsidizing the top line of the countries where their little-paying customers often travel.

Competition in the Danish market isn't actually health. It's good for the consumers, but the providers are running on extremely low margins compared to pretty much anywhere else.

It's basically the world's toughest market for mobile telephony.

This sounds exactly what the free market is always sold on: lowest prices for consumers, only the most effective businesses stay afloat...

True, but the same free market allowed the phone companies to charge exorbitant prices for EU roaming.

Telenor and Telia wanted to merge in Denmark last year, but wasn't allowed to, because it would hurt customers, so the free market isn't really in play anymore.

> Yeah, the telcos have already found a way out

What are "the telcos"? I just got an SMS from Vodafone announcing that from now on, I won't pay roaming fees in EU countries.

Same with EE in the UK. I did previously pay for an EU roaming addon which cost £3/day in the EU, they've said that that's removed from the account, and charges in the EU will be the same as at home, no extra charges.

Same from TIM in Italy.

This is not possible! The rule is clear: in every EU country you can use your mobile phone under the same conditions as in your base country (with some minor exceptions mostly for mobile data). Telcos not obeying this rule will be fined (or may even lose Radio Frequency License if not willing to obey).

I'm not completely sure that's true – it's possible that an operator might simply choose not to offer roaming at all with their basic plans, requiring an add-on to allow roaming.

But the op said that telcos found a way around this, implicating that plans were changed to exclude roaming. But I haven't heard from anyone in UK or Germany who had roaming taken away.

So it remains possible that a company will try it at some point but it will likely be very rare.

Would anyone get a plan without roaming? Looking at the size of European countries that would be unthinkable for anyone I know. Unless it's.. free or something. Maybe then.

I use LTE for my home's main internet connection, and it will never roam.

(I can't get fiber without paying five digits sums of €, and ADSL is around 3 Mbit/s).

So, if prices rise due to roaming charges, I'm paying more and get nothing.

Can you Netflix?

Yes, that's the bulk of traffic of course, although it's mostly the kids, not me.

Not quite. Providers are still free to offer contracts without any kind of roaming.

Do you have any source for this information?

This document seems to imply it, but it's not explicit: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/faq/frequently...

Every existing or new contract that includes roaming services will change to "roam like at home" contract.

That does seem to exclude contracts that don't include roaming services.

Worked out perfectly fine for me. My provider is one of the cheapest available in Austria and they recently sent me a message to let me know that I now pay the same for phone calls and mobile internet in other EU countries.

Try and use your full data allowance abroad and get back to me.

Won't be a problem. They can have fair use policies for unlimited data but otherwise it'll be the same as using it at home.

Of course it is a problem. I pay for 10gb a month but go on holiday for say two weeks and only have 2gb available precisely when I'm likely to need most of my allowance. I get charged a ridiculous rate for each GB after that. This is a big improvement but is not the end of roaming as it is currently advertised.

Which telcos and in which country? Everything seems fine here in Croatia.

In Denmark it seems that most are remove EU roaming. I don't think 3 is, but Telia and CBB (Telenor subsidiary) are.

The CBB contract for example is adding 40DKK to the price, for EU coverage.

Telia in Norway has offered free EU roaming (GB included are also available in EU without extra cost) for about a year now.

Can you name one European operator that does that?

Telmore in Denmark (my current operator) first gave my subscription a price hike to "compensate" for the new roaming rules and then advertised that I could change to a "Denmark only" subscription for the old price.

It seems this option is now gone, however instead I now have separate data limits between Denmark and EU, with the latter being substantially less (only 5 GB, "calculated based on your subscription").

When I'm a bit less stressed I think I'll start shopping around for another operator :^)

Telmore's web page was confusing up until today, but my "Telmore Play" with 25 GB included has 8 GB of it usable in EU.

Apparently there's a complex "fair usage" formula that is allegedly EU mandated:

> EU Data = (abonnementspris x 2) / EU-defineret GB pris

Which looks fair. It's obvious that they need some kind of fair use policy to avoid that people just buy the SIM in the cheapest country. 8GB per month abroad on a 25GB plan will suffice for 99.x% of people and is a huge step compared to the situation previously.

Telenor in Denmark, and its subsidiaries, are removing EU roaming for some contracts, or splitting them into EU and DK contracts.

50DKK extra for double the data (20GB) and EU roaming isn't that bad.

Telecoms in at least some countries are already having to back down on that due to regulator pressure.

Everything fine in Greece too. In fact, I've been using this for free for a year+ because my telco decided to include it in my (high-price, 20 eur/mo) plan for free earlier than planned.

Oh, yeah, some telecoms have no interest in trying to get out of this, and have been doing some form of free roaming even before forced to. Ultimately, "we're not trying to screw you over" is a great marketing point; I'd say telecoms who try to resist will suffer in the marketplace.

Anecdotal but not the case for me. I have a dual sim phone with a Virgin UK SIM and a Meo Portuguese SIM - both sent me texts recently saying my plans now work across Europe without roaming charges (and they aren't super impressive plans, just standard ones).

Exactly. My both subscriptions -- Congstar in Germany and T-Mobile in Poland still charge me for everything abroad.

I didn't bother to compare the prices too long but I think they cut them down just a bit.

This is not legal.

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