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Roaming Charges a Major Hindrance to EU Mobile Use

posted by mattie_p on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-stay-home dept.

girlwhowaspluggedout writes:

"The European Commission reports that, fearing high roaming charges, many EU citizens forgo the use of their mobile phones outside their home country. According to a survey done by the Commission (pdf), when travelling to another EU country, 90% of all EU citizens limit their e-mail use, 47% do not use their mobile internet connection, 33% never place calls, 25% do not text, and a staggering 28% simply turn off their mobile phones.

Roaming charges, the Commission suggests, are hurting the fledgling EU app sector. In trying to avoid paying data premiums, travelers limit their use of data-heavy apps, like travel guides, maps, and photo applications. Frequent travelers are even more likely to turn-off their phones, perhaps due to being better informed about the costs of data roaming.

The Commission reports that data roaming use across the EU has increased by 1500% since the introduction of price caps in 2008. It suggests that by eliminating all roaming charges, mobile providers will gain a further 300 million customers. These findings give further support to regulations proposed by the Commission that will create a single mobile phone market throughout the EU, enabling all customers to enjoy domestic rates when travelling within the EU."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by hankwang on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:27AM

    by hankwang (100) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:27AM (#2184) Homepage

    I'm in Netherlands. There are a lot of mobile virtual network operators that have very low domestic rates for voice calls. Unfortunately, for roaming they use the maximum allowed EU rate, not to mention the rates in Europe-not-EU (e.g. Norway, Switzerland, Turkey: I think around 2 euro per min/MB).

    Most of the main (non-virtual) operators here have good deals for roaming, although they are often "opt-in". Mine charges 2 euro per day abroad for a bundle of 20 min, 20 sms, 35 MB, including a few non-EU countries.

    It was my primary reason for cpughing up the higher monthly fee, rather than moving to an MVNO.

    Not sure how it is in other EU countries.

    P.S. Soylentnews: please consider posting stories with a non-American focus at a time that we are awake!

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  • (Score: 1) by Dopefish on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:26AM

    by Dopefish (12) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:26AM (#2203)

    Greetings hankwang! I'm one of the main editors here at SoylentNews. Regarding your P.S. note, we are working hard to improve the output of content and wish to thank you for your feedback! I will definitely push for stories with more international appeal going forward! :)

    • (Score: 1) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:25AM

      by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:25AM (#2313) Journal
      If you're looking for editors in non-US time zones to approve stories, I'd be happy to volunteer (TheRaven64 in the other place - I finally got to drop the 64 when I came here).
      --
      sudo mod me up

  • (Score: 1) by xaxa on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:06AM

    by xaxa (1489) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:06AM (#2302)

    I live in the UK, but I have SIM cards from Germany, the Netherlands and Vietnam. For just using data, it's no problem to have a different phone number for a week.

    The cheap virtual operators are great for this. I got a SIM from Bliep.nl and more than enough data for the week for about €10, which was very useful for using maps. (I cycled from Aachen to Rotterdam, so I needed 3G access to maps.)

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by epl on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:10AM

    by epl (1801) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:10AM (#2306)

    I live about 5-7minutes (depending on traffic) from the border and roaming is a total and utter BITCH.

    Some telcos used to offer special packages for people that live very close to the border; it boiled down to you paying about 1.5x normal rate and getting two home countries in return. It wasn't a spectacular deal, but it sure beats the current situation where after a 15 minute bike ride I get no data at all and if the phone rings I have to think really hard if I am willing to accept the call.

    WORST thing is the network in both countries is owned by the exact same company!

  • (Score: 1) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:32AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:32AM (#2315) Journal
    Two Euros is about what I pay per month on my mobile. Two a day is good value if you're using the phone a lot in a foreign country, but it sucks for occasional use. I recently switched to Three's 3-2-1 plan (3p/min calls, 2p/SMS, 1p/MB data) and I've found that I use the phone a lot more. For one thing, I now rarely use SIP, because it's cheaper to use my mobile when calling mobiles and it's only slightly more expensive when calling landlines (and the call quality is a lot better). I don't use data much, because I'm usually near WiFi, but at 1p/MB I can happily do some low-bandwidth things without worrying too much about the cost. In particular, there's no step function. My previous provider was about the same price, but was 25p/day for data, with a 25MB AUP (i.e. don't go over it regularly, but if you do a few times they won't care). I almost never used data on that plan, because the difference between no-data and a tiny bit was a psychological jump. Now, the difference between no-data and some-data is the smallest currency increment available, so I'll happily use a few MBs when I'm out and not care about the cost, because it's so small. In particular, the cost of using a tiny bit of data every day is now 30p/month instead of £7.50/month.
    --
    sudo mod me up

    • (Score: 1) by hankwang on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:48PM

      by hankwang (100) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:48PM (#2381) Homepage

      "Two Euros is about what I pay per month on my mobile. "

      Good luck finding a plan that includes decent data in Netherlands for that price. Apparently smartphone ownership and usage here is so high compared to network capacity that you'll have to pay 10-20 euros per GB per month, even with the domestic MVNOs.