People never really seem to consider the unintended consequences of these kinds of regulations.
You know, Apple and Google both were prescient and at different times (late 90s for Apple early 2000s for Google) they both attempted to obtain licenses for unused spectrum from the FCC to create nation wide high speed wireless data networks... for free. IT was supposed to be like WIFI, unregulated and using spread spectrum, so there could be a free market in data for mobile devices. Both companies tried, both companies had different approaches, but both companies supported the other (well, apple supported google, not sure google was around when Apple tried). And both efforts totally failed.... because there is no money in giving away spectrum. For the "Common good" doesn't matter. The government makes billions from selling something it doesn't own and politicians themselves make billions more from not changing the situation once these large companies have bought their monopolies.
Taking just the consumer viewpoint "yay, free roaming!" is naive. As is just assuming that the reason for roaming charges in the first place is to cheat you.
Roaming charges are usually the consequence of higher costs for the network you're visiting.
In the early days of the market in the USA, they weren't charges-- eg additional fees-- so much as the fact that the "normal" price was a discount, because your plan had negotiated with the individual carriers in a variety of states to build up a network. (Remember the FCC's PCS auctions only allowed a maximum of three entities to have a license in a given city. Thus if metroPCS, swiftel and TexasComm got Austin licenses, then AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, in order to EVEN OFFER SERVICE in Austin Texas would have to do deals with those three companies. This greatly increased costs. Where they could play ball they built a network of fixed prices... and where they couldn't, the "roaming charges" were the additional fee that these people with their state granted tri-opoly would charge AT&T customers when they were visting Austin. In order to even have service.)
Thus these roaming charges are part of the governments exploitation of the common good for profit. (wireless spectrum with spread spectrum technology is nearly infinite. There could be a thousand carriers in Austin without interference. IT's not like the old days of Radio and TV where you needed exclusive "Channels." And spread spectrum technology was invented for WWII by the actress Hedy Lamar, so it's not like it wasn't in use in the 1990s. No, the government had a regulatory framework that was based on the pre-war era and gave it the ability to sell out the public to the tune of many billions of dollars. They also got to create major monopolies and have been reaping the benefits (in campaign contributions) ever since. While we've suffered from lack of competition.
Due to the monopolies the government has created there has been a great deal of consolidation in the industry, the TexasComms and Swiftels of the past have largely been bought by new entities like Verizon which were created-- at great cost and at great acquisition premiums-- to consolidate this already competition limited industry.
And because of the exclusive rights sold in those auctions new entrants cant come aboard.
Consequently when you have a network like this, and you ban roaming charges (Say they did the same here, I don't know what will happen in europe because I'm less familiar with their history) ... the result will be either that people's overall costs go up -- eg: The carrier just builds roaming charges into the standard rate and pockets the difference when you're not roaming... or they will start introducing technology "Differentiators" that are technically different but whose impact is negligible. EG: "3's new LTE3! Only available in the UK! sorry france, your towers haven't been upgraded."
This assumes there are higher costs for roaming in europe as there are in the USA.
To consider economic moves like this you have to consider the landscape and the consequences of making them. IT's not like there's free money.
It didn't have to be this way. The good guys-- Apple and Google both tried to fix it. Other efforts have come since then, more profit oriented, but still competition for the mobile data marketplace. They were also killed.
Mandating free roaming charges will only shift the costs... the root of the problem is this artificial monopoly and that it is essentially corruption designed to line politicians pockets.
> Taking just the consumer viewpoint "yay, free roaming!" is naive.
There is a very simple point to this legislature: It says that every operator will have to sell it's network at a fixed wholesale rate to every other operator. So none of your objections apply. Roaming will be free, because it's the law.
Plus, prices won't rise, since wholesale rates are fixed, and there will be more competition. In other words, German Telekom will have to compete with Finland for price, and thus can't afford to raise it's prices for fear of losing customers to Finland.
An eloquent critique. Of an insane straw-man regulation ("Article 1: All roaming charges are illegal. Article 2: EOF" ?) that doesn't resemble anything anyone's actually proposed.
Against what's actually proposed (a single EU market for telecoms, with single authorisation for providers, necessarily entailing a significant weakening of national spectrum monopolies - with the ban on roaming charges being a side effect at best, albeit the one that works best as a headline aimed at consumers) it appears to be an argument strongly in favour.
Might it be worth at least considering the possibility that the EC has actually thought about this for more than 30 seconds?
You know, Apple and Google both were prescient and at different times (late 90s for Apple early 2000s for Google) they both attempted to obtain licenses for unused spectrum from the FCC to create nation wide high speed wireless data networks... for free. IT was supposed to be like WIFI, unregulated and using spread spectrum, so there could be a free market in data for mobile devices. Both companies tried, both companies had different approaches, but both companies supported the other (well, apple supported google, not sure google was around when Apple tried). And both efforts totally failed.... because there is no money in giving away spectrum. For the "Common good" doesn't matter. The government makes billions from selling something it doesn't own and politicians themselves make billions more from not changing the situation once these large companies have bought their monopolies.
Taking just the consumer viewpoint "yay, free roaming!" is naive. As is just assuming that the reason for roaming charges in the first place is to cheat you.
Roaming charges are usually the consequence of higher costs for the network you're visiting.
In the early days of the market in the USA, they weren't charges-- eg additional fees-- so much as the fact that the "normal" price was a discount, because your plan had negotiated with the individual carriers in a variety of states to build up a network. (Remember the FCC's PCS auctions only allowed a maximum of three entities to have a license in a given city. Thus if metroPCS, swiftel and TexasComm got Austin licenses, then AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, in order to EVEN OFFER SERVICE in Austin Texas would have to do deals with those three companies. This greatly increased costs. Where they could play ball they built a network of fixed prices... and where they couldn't, the "roaming charges" were the additional fee that these people with their state granted tri-opoly would charge AT&T customers when they were visting Austin. In order to even have service.)
Thus these roaming charges are part of the governments exploitation of the common good for profit. (wireless spectrum with spread spectrum technology is nearly infinite. There could be a thousand carriers in Austin without interference. IT's not like the old days of Radio and TV where you needed exclusive "Channels." And spread spectrum technology was invented for WWII by the actress Hedy Lamar, so it's not like it wasn't in use in the 1990s. No, the government had a regulatory framework that was based on the pre-war era and gave it the ability to sell out the public to the tune of many billions of dollars. They also got to create major monopolies and have been reaping the benefits (in campaign contributions) ever since. While we've suffered from lack of competition.
Due to the monopolies the government has created there has been a great deal of consolidation in the industry, the TexasComms and Swiftels of the past have largely been bought by new entities like Verizon which were created-- at great cost and at great acquisition premiums-- to consolidate this already competition limited industry.
And because of the exclusive rights sold in those auctions new entrants cant come aboard.
Consequently when you have a network like this, and you ban roaming charges (Say they did the same here, I don't know what will happen in europe because I'm less familiar with their history) ... the result will be either that people's overall costs go up -- eg: The carrier just builds roaming charges into the standard rate and pockets the difference when you're not roaming... or they will start introducing technology "Differentiators" that are technically different but whose impact is negligible. EG: "3's new LTE3! Only available in the UK! sorry france, your towers haven't been upgraded."
This assumes there are higher costs for roaming in europe as there are in the USA.
To consider economic moves like this you have to consider the landscape and the consequences of making them. IT's not like there's free money.
It didn't have to be this way. The good guys-- Apple and Google both tried to fix it. Other efforts have come since then, more profit oriented, but still competition for the mobile data marketplace. They were also killed.
Mandating free roaming charges will only shift the costs... the root of the problem is this artificial monopoly and that it is essentially corruption designed to line politicians pockets.