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Comment by HNBRN | Hacker News Reader

However the situation is much better now. It was very common for us French people to discover a huge roaming bill after a trip in another European country. At least roaming cost are becoming predictable

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Yep. Still remember when I got charged 8 EUR just for being close to the border with the Czech Republic but still within our side of the border.

They made a lot of money with this roaming business.

All GSM and later digital phones, starting with Nokia 2110 and its contemporaries, had an option to refuse roaming - just to avoid accidental phone bills like this.

(I think the 1st generation NMT network in Nordic countries also had the same, though I am not sure as I never owned one.)

Yes, because it appears the Latvians are now subsidising your roaming charges.

And the French are subsidising Latvian agriculture, universities, roads, and infrastructure. I don't think it's fair to evaluate this policy isolated from the rest of EU policies.

The French are subsidising French agriculture and so is everyone else in EU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy

There are two million Latvians. Pre-Brexit EU has over 500 million citizens. Your math doesn't work unless each Latvian is paying 5000 euros / month.

It's possible that visitors to Lithuania were paying high termination fees to the local telco and subsidizing the native subscribers.

Assuming the telco profits remained static (which may or may not be true) presumably someone was paying these costs before and if it wasn't Lithuanians then who was it?

I guess you're not serious, are you?

Not that serious.

But the grandparent post was someone from Latvia saying 'this is terrible our prices have gone up' which was followed by someone from France saying 'no this is great our prices have gone down'.

Someone's paying for it, and I doubt it's the Telcos who are losing out.

Oh, telcos absolutely lose, because there were a few companies present in most EU countries and somehow most of them charged for roaming anyway only because they could - it cost them nothing extra.

Parcels are next, so I hear.

Do you think Latvians don't go to other EU countries and don't use roaming? Those who do now pay less, so it's Latvians paying for Latvians.

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