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E.U. to End Cellphone Roaming Charges in 2017

posted by janrinok on Wednesday July 01 2015, @01:25AM   
from the progress dept.

AnonTechie writes:

European officials agreed on Tuesday to outlaw cellphone roaming charges, beginning in 2017, when people travel across the 28-member bloc. The change is part of long-awaited overhauls aimed at improving how Europeans connect to and use mobile services.

The new rules, which have pitted many of the region's telecommunications operators against consumer groups, also include so-called net neutrality regulations intended to ensure that Internet service providers and other companies cannot discriminate between different services that run on their data networks.

Policy makers hope the changes will jump-start the use of mobile services in Europe and foster greater economic activity across the region, which in many ways is still divided by national boundaries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/01/business/international/eu-roaming-charges-net-neutrality.html

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Original Submission

• Net Neutrality out the window in the same move (Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:47AM

  by canopic jug (3949) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:47AM (#203610) Journal

  And in the same move, net neutrality is scuppered [laquadrature.net]. The roaming announcement is just a distraction for a major loss. The new arrangement specifically allows tiered access [wired.com] also known as so-called fast lanes [arstechnica.co.uk], the the antithesis of an open Internet. It's not over for Net Neutrality in Europe, but it is a lot more work to achieve now. The roaming charges were going away anyway, so this is just a bone tossed to the public to draw attention away from what really happened.

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  Starting Score:	1		point
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