EU roaming charges may be over (about bloody time, if you ask me – UK Vodafone charged me an arm and a leg for calls using Italian.... err Vodafone)

However, I have a suspicion that it will now cost me £5 per minute to use my phone in non-European countries, e.g. Turley or Russia.

Roaming charges are ridiculous, not just for Europe – and not just for calls, for SMS too. I am not even contemplating to use data abroad.. One of my customers once used a T-Mobile data card that came free with his Sony laptop to check his emails in Kazakhstan. He later received a £600 bill.

What a neutral article!!!

I am not so pleased with the caps. As somebody who doesn't travel in Europe that much I am really chuffed at having to foot the extra cost on my domestic bill. You can only support such capping out of self interest, ignorance, or intolerence of consumer choice. This capping is uneccessary regulation and it is very pleasing to see the UK standing up for free competition and choice.

Bunch of corrupt a-holes.

For decades, if anyone vaguely important like an Eire or Norwegian MP, had a query about BNFL and radioactive discarging into the Irish Sea, the UK civil servant who dealt with it simply asked BNFL to write some sort of letter.

For decades, the top committee at the malign MAFF (now subsumed into DEFRA, but looking like a reverse takeover) was composed largely of agricultural bigwigs.

Plus ca change. Never confuse suffrage with democracy.

You are aware that roaming charges were ridiculously high and that telcos practically had established a pricing cartel, making an arm and a leg on roaming?

There were no price increases to domestic bills as long as you did not accept the new roaming tarriffs, which you were under no obligation to. In fact many people who agreed to the new tarriffs too early were fools to as the caps apply to *all* contracts wef. the start of this month.

Back to the legislation itself: a shining example of the European Commission and Parliament working hand-in-hand against vested interests. The German government was as equally opposed to the charges which is why the Council of Ministers came up with the "compromise" with much higher caps than initially envisaged by the Commission.

This is the same Commission that took on Microsoft and won and is due to take on the energy fat cats in a bid to provide us with cheaper but more efficiently produced and distributed energy.

Its a classic case of "You Screw my customers and I'll screw yours" when they roam and lets have our cocaine lifestyle with Gordon Brown as a guest. After all he benefitted from the spectrum Auction's largesse backed by mobile Telcos!

Payback time.

Consumers ? Who gives a f**k for them?

Long Live Ripoff Britain.

Since when did the “normal” consumers have to foot the bill for international travellers?

I know of no person who had their monthly contract go up a single pence – “roamers” or not.

Free market economy does not imply that the consumer can be shafted as a result of the cartel agreement between the operators.

Come on, did my example about “roaming” chargers for Vodafone UK customer by Vodafone Italy mean nothing to you?

It's "non-EU", not "non-European" - Orange UK ripped me £1.30 for a sub-minute call in Norway a little while back, if I remember rightly.

Great ... I can call the neu Roman Empire for significantly cheaper, talk to the Nazi's in Germany, the socialists in Spain, the a**holes in France but now a call to my local MP, who I actually elected, costs me double ... thank you EU.

Charlie Clark: "There were no price increases to domestic bills"

Oh, of course, I'm sure you know the intricate details of all the operators' tarrifs and how they might change in the future.

voshkin: "Since when did the “normal” consumers have to foot the bill for international travellers?"

You need to engage your brain here. The operators make lots of money from various sources. It all ends up in the same pot, so if they make less money in one way they'll just make more somewhere else.

Price controls are stupid, ludicrous and don't work.

Why do those of you moaning about the charges ever use your phones abroad? Why don't you use a phonebox/landline/pre-pay card/VoIP/whatever? Is it, *shock horror*, that you're actually willing to pay the premium for the convenience?

So what we've ended up with is some companies getting punished for providing a service which people want. Super.

Got one word for you here:

Bullshit.

That's what this is about. The telco's want to continue their little cartel monopoly. What are these 'charges' for? Does it actually cost Vodaphone UK money to send your (tiny) amount of data across the lines (or over the sat) to Vodaphone Italy? Maybe. A little. Telco's charge each other a little for the privilege of carrying their data. Not much though. Nowhere near the cost they pass on to Johnny Billpayer.

No, that's just gouging. Because if you want to send data from your phone in the uk to a phone in france, you have to use the phone network. End of story. At least, it was before VoIP. That's another barrel of bovine faeces altogether though.

Now, I have no problem with a company charging money for a service, say allowing you to use your phone on a foreign network. After all, they run the thing, there's infrastructure to be built, maintained, bills to pay for the spectrum, bribes to pay for 'extra-special' lobbying by [Insert Corrupt Govt. of Choice Here].

No, what I object to is total, absolute and deliberate price-gouging. It's bad enough charging anything more than a nominal fee over and above a contracted monthly amount. But that's the way the world works, and a couple of pence a minute isn't going to get the company HQ picketed any day soon.

£1.30 a minute to use a shitty low-rate net connection that probably cost the company either a) nothing 'cause they have a traffic sharing agreement or b) about 5p a minute? No, you can fuck right off. That's like all the bakers in town getting together and agreeing to put on a long-face and say how bad the wheat harvest has been and say bread therefore is going up 20x the normal rate. So's they can have a piss-up of gargantuan proportions come Christmas down the local pub.

Well I for one am not happy paying Vodaphone, Orange or the rest ludicrous sums so's they can have a piss-up come Christmas. Fuck 'em. Nice to see the EU laying down the la and saying "Fine, by all means charge customers more since they're not in their own country. Just don't take the piss with it anymore."

That's what having governmental oversight means. Don't defend these greedy scum-sucking vulturous* bastards. And don't be fooled by them either. Maybe if there were less gullible 'tards like you around, our own govt. would stop consistently screwing us punters up the arse every time an opportunity arises for the to make a bit of personal coin.

* No offense meant to the Reg and it's beloved carrion mascot! BTW did you lads notice that the Wee Man has returned to his cage in Aberdeen!

It is often the case that it is cheaper to buy a local pre-pay SIM and make your calls home with that than it is to use your own operator's roaming service.

For example in Egypt it costs £1.70 a minute with an O2 phone and each text is 40p, to receive a call costs you £1.65 a minute. With a local SIM (£2.50 if bought locally) it costs 30p a minute to phone the UK, a text is 5p and it costs you nothing for incoming calls. And as it is pre-pay you don't get a scary bill a few weeks later either.

This month I recieved a £1000+ bill from Vodafone due 5 very brief data-calls while Roaming in the Netherlands!!?!?

I've done a lot of Roaming in my time and seen some fairly hefty bills. But for downloading ~150MB of data, to get charged over £1000 is just ridiculous however they may choose to do their maths. Especially when I'm Roaming on bloody Vodafone NL bandwidth! It's hardly like I need to make an "International-call" back to Vodafone UK!

In short, there's still alot of work needs to be done on this Roaming Cap...

I don't buy it - the cost and effort required to make this work for UK based contracts far out weigh any gains on their current pricing structure. Apart from this, mobile operators have know for at least 2 years this was coming - not unlike the banks being told years in advance their charges would have to be reduced giving them time to get their affairs in order.

I think what we might be getting here is a leaked sweetener before Europe take something else out of our pockets.

On a side note, if sensitive government communications are being leaked why aren't the police investigating this - don't all these officials sign the official secrets act?

Power does not corrupt, It's just that the corrupt find it much more simple to gain the power (honest people get eaten alive in the struggle).

Never, never, never trust a person in power. Least of all your own government.

A civil servent e-mailing a telco is not even vaguely sensitive. Apart from maybe to the companies involved.

The regulators will keep eyes open and help reduce the cost going on to the domestic bills. Me thinks - I don't have the paperwork to back it up.

The costs involved in the mobile network is ensuring they have the infrastructure to support the needed bandwidth, more punters making more calls requires extra equipment. It's not the calls that cost - just updating and maintaining the hardware.

Every time you get a new contract, haggle like hell to drop the price. You will normally win if the offer isn't already good (which does happen;).

http://www.writetothem.com/

Do it at that URL :)

I did and have asked it be brought up in Parliament.

voshkin said:

I know of no person who had their monthly contract go up a single pence – “roamers” or not.

Is it a coincidence that as soon as the roaming cap comes into force, O2 put up their rates to 0845 and 0870 numbers to a whopping 20p/min and exclude them from included minutes? It now cost me £6 to pay my water bill. Great!

Tip: use alternative numbers: http://www.saynoto0870.com/

More tips here:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/0870-say-no?gclid=CN_nsNqYrI8CFQ7klAodUwFvIA

Orange have brought Norway (and other non-EU European locations like Switzerland, Iceland, Andorra) into their EU-capped tariff. If they're charging you more than this complain that it's higher than the advertised rate on their website.

From www.orange.co.uk, click on "using your mobile abroad" under "help & support", then click "costs and services abroad" and take a look around.

Virgin charge their old pre-cap rates for these non-EU Europe locations (30p/60p for pay monthly users, 60p/95p for PAYG). O2 also charge the non-capped rates. Vodafone charge the capped rates (and unlike Orange, also include the Faroes). T-Mobile are charging the capped rates for Iceland and Norway - but not Switzerland.

Curiously, Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean is also on the capped rate on Orange and Three.

I'm still using my OneRoam SIMs when traveling. PAYG, credit never dies, 27p/min to most european (not just EU) countries, free incoming in most as well. Caller pays 13p/min from the UK to call via a call through number. I put the UK number on voicemail with the OneRoam number in the message. OneRoam is expensive in the US so I just buy a Tracfone when I'm there, calls to the UK and europe cost no more than to US numbers (again via a call through number, Tracfone supplied).

In the UK I use iSkoot on my Treo (and family Razrs) to make most int'l calls. Data remains a problem so I just use wifi for data when traveling.

Soruk,

Réunion is an overseas département of France which is in the EU.

The Sceptic,

Heard of the Freedom of Information Act?

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/acts2000/20000036.htm

"£1000+ bill from Vodafone due 5 very brief data-calls while Roaming in the Netherlands!!?!?"

Very brief but you managed to download 150mb???

If you are roaming that often then time to get on a proper tariff.

Appx £120 pm month for (normally) pretty high speed data.

Covers all my UK usage (about 2gb pm) and any calls to retrieve e-mail with a bit of web surfing. Go over its 4.99 per mb not £10+

That aside, tariffs are the biggest rip-off for the occassional traveller from the UK and anything which lowers them is OK by me.

""Is it a coincidence that as soon as the roaming cap comes into force, O2 put up their rates to 0845 and 0870 numbers to a whopping 20p/min and exclude them from included minutes? It now cost me £6 to pay my water bill. Great!""

The ignorance of some people is staggering!!!

The operators are excluding 08x numbers from free minutes not because of the evil roaming cap, but because of the international call discount numbers.

For example, I can call Russia for 2p per minute using an 08x number from any landline, or using including minutes from a mobile – all I have to do is call the 08x number, then, after the voice prompt dial the number in Russia.

Naturally, it does not cost 2p to call Russia from my mobile, not even £1, so guess who I am going to give my money to, and guess who does not want to lose the revenue stream from me?

P.S. who in their right mind will call the water board using their mobile anyway? Ever heard of landlines?

You moron.... that enough away from the fence for you??

In the theme of the message, the flame icon is selected! ;)

"Where—

(a) the appropriate records authority receives a request for information which relates to information which is, or if it existed would be, contained in a transferred public record, and

(b) either of the conditions in subsection (2) is satisfied in relation to any of that information,"

I feel the need to highlight that simply an event happening is not enough to make it a available to the public. There is a process where by the information is deemed available for public viewing.

The period of time for the process required to make the information available exceeds the possibility of recent and current events being leaked - in theory.

Regards,

In my opinion, cartel is a very polite word for this hideous operators.

All the arguments above regarding Building networks, maintainanace etc is hogwash, since they are all sunken costs,long recovered against taxes many years ago. So its just maintainance at best and supporting the services (which are mostly outsourced already) at sweatshop rates.(barring a few new masts being built).Dont most of them claim 98 of the country already covered?

If anything, maintainance is extremely low on these type of services, since NO street/cables to be dug, wires connected to Junction boxes, copper wires to the home etc etc. Its a very hollow argument either way one looks. By this reasoning, BT should be charging more for landline calls rather than Mobile telcos, due to their overhead costs. Yet they are making a pile.

So WTF are mobile Telcos screwing everyone? Corporate Greed at its worst manifestation.

Reminds of the perfume marketing Analogy in a Time Magazine report long ago.

In summary it mentioned "NO PERFUME SHOULD COST MORE THAN THE BOTTLE ITS PACKED IN!"