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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
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @09:01AM
Mobile phone plans are much cheaper in most European countries than in the US, but the EU is not one country, so roaming charges apply if you use your phone outside of your home country, even in other EU countries. This has many people disabling data roaming altogether, so while data usage is through the roof in general, data usage while abroad is still hampered by the expectation of high costs. Mostly it's actually not that expensive, but since any flat rates and inclusive quotas don't apply abroad, the perceived lack of control over the charges is what's holding data roaming back.