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Comment by martinmunk | Hacker News Reader

I’m in Denmark. I have “3” as a phone provider and have essentially an unlimited plan for 30usd, with free roaming in most of the world. My home internet is served as an IOT plan with a “300MB” plan that in practice the network owned by the old national provider don’t cap, so I hit 1TB on 4G with a monthly fee of ~4.7USD. I know many people who does the same. The US really seem like in need of some good old competition.

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Same in the UK: 3's inclusive free global roaming (works in 71 countries! almost anywhere I'd ever go) is absolutely brilliant.

Unfortunately their UK network is awful, slow and broken, so I had to leave them. But I really miss the roaming.

Could a random person show up in Denmark and buy this plan? That sounds amazing

Not sure. Some limitations were removed when EU rules for roaming charges were put in place. To be fair, my “IOT” plan is Denmark-only.

I don't know about Denmark in particular, but in other EU countries they stipulate you have to spend the majority of time/data in the "home" country or the expensive roaming fees apply.

Not idea whether they actually check/apply this though.

There is a limitation for that.

"A surcharge may be applied if: * you use roaming services more than domestic services and spend more time travelling than in Finland"

https://www.traficom.fi/en/communications/broadband-and-tele...

Ironically, for “competition” you might well have said “free market capitalism”.

Except that provision of basic mono-utilities such as drinking water, roads, and The Internet is probably best provided by the state. At least the cell phone tower part, leaving the internet exchange part upwards to private companies.

(This pre supposes a level of benevolence / lack of malevolence from the state, or a faith in protocols further up the stack to have end to end security. At least one of these exists.)

Both the 4G infrastructure, and internet lines dug in the ground has beenopened up by law, so new providers can rent their way into existence for a reasonable price. Before then, the national monopoly that was TDC was horrible to deal with, and still is. I signed up for a fiber line for our office with them, and they’ve so far provided as bad a service as possible without breach of contract. Competition is good, sometimes lawmakers are needed to make that happen.

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