EU votes net neutrality into law, abolishes mobile roaming charges | Hacker News Reader

EU votes net neutrality into law, abolishes mobile roaming charges

computerworld.com

115 pointsLibertatea25 comments

I said it before in the other thread, but I guess it's worth reemphasizing: The abolishment of roaming charges is huge and could really establish a single telecoms market. This point has somehow been lost in all the excitement and discussions about net neutrality.

Why is this huge?

The differences between domestic rates and non-domestic rates are what kept the European Telecoms market from becoming truly European. As a German, the only viable option if I am spending most my time within Germany was to go with a German carrier. Now with the removal of roaming charges, the EU becomes the domestic market and in principle I could shop around other EU countries to find the best deal. Austria for example has some really good deals, so maybe I will go with a carrier from there. And with SEPA even billing should not be an issue.

The other (intended) thing this will spur is further consolidation of the EU Telecoms market as there will suddenly be a much larger number of competing players on the market. As I said, in principle Austrian Telecoms are now for the first time directly competing for customers with Spanish Telecoms in Germany, so I guess we'll see a lot more mergers in the close future. Which might turn out to be anticompetitive in the long run, mind.

(I blogged about it here [1] in more detail and with a few more resources, in case anyone is interested. Happy to explore this further with anyone into this topic)

[1] http://sveme.org/removing-eu-roaming-charges-is-a-big-deal.h...

Being pessimistic... as the European Telecoms becomes "truly European", the carriers will probably start merging. Eventually you'll wind up where we are in the US, with a couple of huge carriers, a moderately sized carrier, and some small carriers that barely count. And then they'll start colluding, and providing poor service because they don't have to compete anymore.

Welcome to the club.

The EU can and will act to block mergers it considers to be anticompetitive.

It's about time to progressively tax (VAT, not profit) companies in "monopoly" markets.

In germany companies in monopoly markets (e.g. power transmission) have a fixed profit margin (I think 10%).

The thing is, there effectively has been a lot of consolidation of the EU telecoms market, even with its fragmentation due to roaming tariffs. The only thing is that the likes of Vodafone, Telefónica, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, TeliaSonera, Tele2, Hutchison Whampoa, Telenor, Airtel, Swisscom, &c., have had to establish subsidiaries in the various member states up until this point, and what we're likely to see is that the parent companies will start consolidating their national subsidiaries.

I doubt we'll end up with anything near as bad as the situation in the US, where they're left with effectively four operators of note operating two incompatible sets of standards, given the EU's greater overall diversity: language barriers, if nothing else, place limits on population migration, so smaller telcos with a firm footing in a particular market might be protected from larger multinationals eating their lunch completely.

But wouldn't it cost other people more money who want to get in touch with you if you did decide to go with a "non-domestic" carrier? For instance, if I have a non-German phone number, while living in Germany, and expecting people around here to call and text me? Or does that too fall under "roaming"? To me I think of roaming as being that I, with my German number, can still call and text other German numbers, and use my data, for the same price as I normally would, even when I am physically in another EU country.

I was wondering about that as well so I checked (see the write-up):

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Update: Someone on Hackernews argued that international charges would still apply. However, according to this [1]:

"International call charges would be capped at the price of a long-distance domestic call and intra-EU mobile calls at €0.19 per minute (plus VAT)."

there would be no difference between domestic and (EU-)international, eventually creating the coveted single market.

From Ryan Heath, spokesman of Neelie Kroes:

(Sven @1sveme)

@RyanHeathEU would the new roaming rule mean that a truly single market would be created? Could an Austrian company compete in Germany?

(Ryan Heath @RyanHeathEU)

@1sveme yes. You could buy your mobile subscription from another EU country and a company could easily set up in another country

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[1] http://ec.europa.eu/news/science/130916_en.htm

(update: edited for clarity, damn, I don't get those formatting possibilities on HN)

I think you are right about that.

Roaming traditionally refers to using your phone outside of its network country. So calls to that phone will still be charged an international call charge.

Then again, if you have a data plan, coupled with some kind of VOIP service, you could effectively use your phone across all of Europe for the simple price of an unlimited data package.

So one of two things happens, either rates go up to pay for lost revenue of no roaming or rates come down as players fight it out and remove their competition.

There will be probably be many cases where "technicalities" prevent one countries telecom from cooperating and such.

Paying the same rate at home as abroad is huge. I don't think I have ever experienced throttling but roaming charges make your phone almost entirely useless few kilometres beyond the border. You have to switch SIM cards, or chase WiFi. And the new regulation will include data[1].

One thing that worries me is what this means for small, local providers who often have great rates but are not backed by any of the EU-wide groups (Orange, T-Mobile).

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26866966

> And the new regulation will include data[1].

Excellent. I wasn't sure whether it dropped data and voice roaming or only voice.

This is a huge step. But the EU states still have to agree on that. So it will probably still take many months for a final decision.

We are in the lucky position, however, that there is an EU parliament election coming up. Since the national parties feel quite embarrassed if their representatives don't perform, nobody will be willing to oppose the immensely popular move to abolish roaming.

Title is wrong. It hasn't been "voted into law". It's passed its second reading in the European Parliament. Since the EP proposed amendments, it must now go back to the Council of Ministers for a second reading there. If they approve the EP's amendments, then it will become law; if not it'll go to a conciliation committee for the Parliament and Council to hash out their differences.

The article sort-of acknowledges this on the last line, but that doesn't excuse the title.

(It's this error that gave e.g. the several dozen "UK gay marriage law passes!" stories we got spread out over a six month period. Apparently the media keeps forgetting that legislative procedures take a long time and involves lots of votes at various stages, and runs a "X voted into law!11one" story at each stage...)

It strikes me that the EU and the USA are really going in different directions in governmental philosophy.

The EU seems to be moving toward regulation to assure QoS (if you will) for consumers and harmonization across jurisdictions, relying on business to make do within centrally established frameworks.

The USA, on the other hand, is moving toward empowerment of established interests and relying on self-organization on the governmental and business levels to hopefully produce ideal outcomes. I see this happening in the rulings on net neutrality, electoral regulation, and IP. It seems to be driven by all three branches of government. I guess we'll see if the upcoming Aereo SCOTUS decision continues this trend.

I'm sure this abstraction is super-leaky...

I just know that I never hear about consumer protection regulation in the US any more. I only hear about it in Europe. I think that in the US consumer protection got thrown under the bus in the general move toward laissez-faire in the 80s and 90s.

> It strikes me that the EU and the USA are really going in different directions in governmental philosophy.

You don't have the right perspective: The EU project since 2008 has show all of its flaws. It has been heavily jeopardized and it's in the brink of collapse. All these politicians in Brussels are not directly elected. Actually there's a huge discussion if they should be considered elected or appointed. Since the -crisis stepped in, the European Parliament has been reduced into a Clown. No decision is being made there and it's seen by the entire north and south as the mother of all evils. Germany is in control now.

So in order to get back some support, it is trying to become more social. Up until now the only good thing that ever came it was the ridiculous USB thing (where companies all use USB adapters and not different forms). Other than that, it did nothing to promote the values theoretically stands for.

And if all this sound naive, mind you, in my country Euro-philes were at a rate of 95% up until 2007, now it's less than 35%... They don't make gallops because local politicians are afraid of the results

> All these politicians in Brussels are not directly elected.

I don't believe that's correct. Since 1979, every member state has elected MEPs.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html

When does the roaming charge aboloshment go into effect?

From http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-373_en.htm :

"Today the European Parliament voted to end roaming charges by Christmas 2015"

This doesn't mean anything yet ... the EU states still have to agree on this and this will take many more months before a final decision is made.

I don't want to sound ungrateful, but the only reason Euro-politicians have put so much energy into, first, universal chargers, and now, roaming costs, is that they are some of the only issues that affect them directly, because of the extraordinary amount of air travel they do within the EU.

I'm sure the politicians get their phone bill paid for them.

I wonder what will be the unintended consequences of abolishing roaming fees?

One would probably be slower upgrades to 4G, 5G as things cost money and now carriers will have less for capex.

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