Wednesday, 6 July 2011

EU to abolish mobile phone roaming charges

The wise and benevolent EU has decided that it's unacceptable that mobile phone companies charge extra for roaming between EU countries.  After all, you don't pay roaming charges between states in the USA do you so who should you pay in the United States of Europe?

Mobile phone companies make a lot of money from roaming charges and it's that money that helps them give away £400 phones for free when you take out a contract.  Nobody likes paying extra charges but it's a fair compromise - the small minority that use their phones abroad on a regular basis pay the extra cost of using it rather than the majority of mobile phone users subsidising their usage.

In Europe it's as common for people to go to a neighbouring EU country as it is for English people to go to Wales or Scotland but they are still in the minority.  It's not as common in the UK and Ireland though, thanks in part to the EU's environmental laws that make it prohibitively expensive to travel by air but mostly because we're an island and it's not convenient.

The mobile phone companies won't absorb the extra costs, they will pass them on to all their customers.  We will all pay higher bills to subsidise the mobile phone usage of a minority of customers and in the UK and Ireland we will benefit the least.  The EU is not a country, the countries in it are not states in a country like the USA despite the EU's insistence on referring to them as "states" to try and get people to think about them in the same way.  It is not unreasonable to expect to pay a premium for using your mobile phone in a different country.

Comments (4)

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In fact, in many of the smaller EU countries I suspect that it's far more commonplace for them to go cross-border than it is for people in the UK to visit different nations within the Union. I mean, a Swiss couple would have many good reasons to visit, say, Germany. But an Englishman would not have the same reasons to visit Wales or Scotland.

A person in Dundalk would have more reason to visit the UK than someone in Oxford would have to visit Scotland. And so on. A lot of international moving about in mainland Europe is to do with cheaper deals, holidaying, visiting friends/family or in the case of countries like Denmark/Sweden employment. Most people do not have this situation in the UK.

As you say, it's all absolute nonsense.
1 reply · active 715 weeks ago
Exactly and we'll end up paying for the minority that do travel abroad a lot.
i agree this post..
many of the smaller EU countries I suspect that it's far more commonplace for them to go cross-border than it is for people in the UK to visit different nations within the Union. thanks for sharing !!!!!

voip

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