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."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by tomtomtom on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:13PM
I suspect there are for two reasons for this actually - firstly roaming charges which can be high but manageable, at least within the EU; but secondly because of battery life. Today's smartphones have AWFUL battery life compared to the feature phones of 10 years ago. Even if you switch off data completely, they often won't last a full day on a normal charge.
Typically when I'm in my home country I spend my time going between places where I can plug a phone in - at home, at a friend's house, in the office, etc. At most I'm away from a charger for say 4-5 hours. Abroad (for work or leisure) it's often a different story - I may need to go from leaving the hotel at 8am until returning much later in the day without charging. The phone might just about last that long not doing anything but as soon as I also need to make calls or use data (even Wifi data), it starts to eat into my battery life pretty severely.
I eventually ended up buying an extra big battery to get around this. But very few people seem to even be aware of their existence; I get asked where I got it and how I knew to look for such a thing by people the first time they see my phone quite a lot.