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: 1) by ArmoredDragon on Thursday February 20 2014, @02:20AM
Seems rather strange to me. With T-Mobile I can roam to AT&T, or even travel abroad to Canada or Europe not see any roaming charges so long as I only use data (easy fix: Skype.) I pay $23 per month per phone on a 5 line family plan on t-mobile. Data is only limited to 500mb of LTE data, after that it goes to Edge which isn't so bad (in spite of being very tech savvy, I'm not a heavy data user at all, except on my home broadband connection.)
I never see an overage though; my bill never changes from $114.65 a month. I can call anywhere to the US/Canada, third party premium texts are blocked, and international calling is blocked (both deliberately and I can unblock them at any time if I want to.)