EU mobile roaming charges will end in June 2017

[qasdfdsaq]

The day we have free global teleportation that may be true.

Until then there's at least another €7.50 for postage, up to €15 if you want it in a sensible time.

[peterb]

WhatsApp allows that already, with changing SIM cards.

In fact apps like that have shifted the value to a mobile service operator away from text and voice call charges towards the costs of data packages. It's not uncommon to find packages with unlimited texts and/or unlimited calls. (With some restrictions on numbers called)

[Saracen]

....

"May" being the operative word. Pardon me for assuming that economic inertia would have prevented anything like the cost cutting that's going on as detailed in this article. I remember well the screams of horror/anguish/outrage from the teleco's (Vodafone especially) about how they were being asked to operate their EU businesses at a loss because of the "unwarranted political interference".

....

Apologies for the delay in answering, but as the thread's been resurrected anyway, here goes ....

The "may" was exactly my point. See my original point ....

What intrigued me in that article was this bit ...

.... The EU has been working to decrease roaming charges within the Europe for a decade and says that prices for roaming calls, SMS and data have fallen by 80 per cent since 2007 thanks to its efforts.

Are they suggesting that market conditions, competitiveness, the advent of smartphones and ever-increasing consumer uptake had nothing to do with it, but it's all the EU?

It was that bland assertion that the drop was entirely and solely due to EU efforts that I queried.

What we have here is almost a perfect case study for an economics class in how oligopoly power can come unstuck. If a small group of suppliers consider it, without explicit agreement because that would be illegal resale price maintenance, to be in their mutually vested interest to cut prices, then prices won't be cut. BUT .... all it needs is either for just ONE of them, or a serious new entrant, to decide to expand it's market share by a price cut and price elasticity is likely to force others to match it. Or exceed it to win back lost share. It is certainly the case for largely homogenous "commodity" goods and services. If you're a premim brand, maybe a Rolex, or a hot fashion label, or maybe Apple, etc. you can resist that because of consumer stickiness and inertia due to brand loyalty. But if it's a service (or product) largely invisible to consumers, then if companies A to D are charging £30/month, and company E comes along at £20 per month, a proportion and perhaps quite a large proportion will cut and switch.


The £30 price holds only if none of the four break ranks and no new entrants appear UNLESS the costs of providing the service are such that price cuts significant enough to overcome inertia aren't viable. But if that were the case, and the EU came along and artificially capped prices at a significantly, the existing suppliers would all either go bust or drop out of a loss-making business.

My point is ...did the EU price cap have an impact? Yeah, very likely.

But was it, in an of itself, responsible for that claimed 80% "due to it's efforts"? Like hell it was.

It's as daft as the assertion that the EU prevented war in Europe, at least within the EU, all by itself, that being an assertion that I think it utterly fatuous in the face of other reasons for it's absence, but in any event, utterly unproveable.

I wouldn't argue that the EU had no impact on either the lack of war in Europe or phone charges, but claiming sole credit for either, while paying no credit to the effect of other factors, is entirely unsupportable.

That is to say, it is for he (or she) making such claims to support the basis for them. It's not like gravity, where a vast body of repeatable experiments all support theories (and I stress, theories) of cause, because we only have one history, one timeline, to go on. Repeat the last 50 years, 100 times or more, varying various factors and produce repeatable results demonstrating that it was ONLY the EU causing these results, and they'll have a case.

Until then, it's the EU claiming responsibility for things they have no way of knowing, or even testing, and relying on a gullible public not noticing or understanding the absence of any valid basis for linking effect to their claimed cause.

Pardon me for assuming ...

Certainly my son. 10 Hail Mary's and three self-flagellation sessions.

[qasdfdsaq]

BUT .... all it needs is either for just ONE of them, or a serious new entrant, to decide to expand it's market share by a price cut and price elasticity is likely to force others to match it. Or exceed it to win back lost share. It is certainly the case for largely homogenous "commodity" goods and services. If you're a premim brand, maybe a Rolex, or a hot fashion label, or maybe Apple, etc. you can resist that because of consumer stickiness and inertia due to brand loyalty. But if it's a service (or product) largely invisible to consumers, then if companies A to D are charging £30/month, and company E comes along at £20 per month, a proportion and perhaps quite a large proportion will cut and switch.

I would posit the presence of several small and/or new players in the UK market for the past decade, yet none of the major operators cutting prices to anywhere near close to matching, would prove that demonstrably false. Indeed, all such new and cheap players remain smaller, and acquiring customers slower, often to the point they have to increase their prices to "not look cheap".

[Tekkul88]

Well even if it's not technically free it's definitely an improvement!