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About LinkBacksRead more.And strong Europe-wide net neutrality rules will come into effect from 30th April 2016.
Read more.And strong Europe-wide net neutrality rules will come into effect from 30th April 2016.
About time. What's worse which happened to me a couple of weeks ago. Stand at Dover and the signal in France is stronger which was 22 miles away.
JABULANI NONKE
Oh great, I have to pay more for my contract so that businessmen don't have to worry about paying extra whilst travelling. Why should I pay for this when I am not travelling to EU?
EU has their priorities right, as usual. Not like there is a major migrant crisis in South Europe or anything.
I like the idea of eu net neutrality but I can't see it doing much if I'm honest.... it will still end up being a case of you pay us enough and it will be 'overlooked'
and lol at this bit... 'No content will be unfairly blocked' yet they allow courts to block a torrent search engine like the pirate bay and other, they don't actually host any files, they're no different to Google/bing in essence which also hosts the same links in some cases. Not that I condone illegal downloads of course but torrents don't just cover illegal downloads.
As to priorities, I'm pretty sure this is likely going through a different 'department' to the migrant crisis in southern Europe and even Calais, oh wait the French and UK governments are dealing with that so we're doomed lol.
No, torrents aren't all illegal content, but the analysis done for the court showed, IIRC, that a percentage in the high 90%s were, for Pirate Bay.Originally Posted by LSG501
But this thread isn't about torrents, and certainly isn't about Pirate Bay.
What intrigued me in that article was this bit ....
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?.... 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.
Of course, personally, I don't give a hoot. I don't use a smartphone, don't use a mobile all that much, and very rarely use roaming outside of the US, and even that, rarely. And of course, EU roaming rules don't affect US use anyway.
To be honest, they could quadrupole call/data charges and I don't care, because I don't make enough calls to care. I put £10 on my PAYG in, IIRC, 2007, and I'll have to top it up shortly. At that rate, running at about £1.50 per year, it's not something that matters to me. I really only have a mobile at all so that the VERY small list of people that have the number can get me if it's urgent, or for the extremely rare call I make.
And no, I'm not a comms dinosaur. Far from it. I had a mobile phone when they were very rare, outside of business use. It's a positive choice to not be contactable by all and sundry, more or less 24/7.
Yes they are, and they'd be right.
Back in 2007, EU roaming cost 70p a minute, today it costs 18p. Data cost £6 a megabyte and now it costs 20p
Back in 2007, non-EU roaming (e.g. Switzerland) cost £1 a minute, today it still costs £1 a minute. Data still costs £6 a megabyte.
The EU forced price caps on mobile roaming costs. Without that it would be just like switzerland as point out above. After all why would they cut costs when they can keep raking in a fortune...Yes they are, and they'd be right.
Back in 2007, EU roaming cost 70p a minute, today it costs 18p. Data cost £6 a megabyte and now it costs 20p
Back in 2007, non-EU roaming (e.g. Switzerland) cost £1 a minute, today it still costs £1 a minute. Data still costs £6 a megabyte.
Sorry but that's a fatuous thing to say - EU has multiple departments so it's more than capable of multi-tasking. And I'd love to how you figure that it's just "businessmen" that'd welcome the end to roaming charges - holiday makers for one, I'm sure, would really appreciate being able to Facebook etc without having to pay an arm and a leg for it. Also, as Kovoet points out, there's unfortunates in the UK where their phone roams to a non-UK tower - nice for them not to be penalised.
Don't believe me? Then check out the articles about the upswing in Three customer numbers - them, of course, having that roaming deal. Although their roaming deal also covers the US - which is very useful.
Quite true, and especially now that the UK government is so "business friendly" (their words not mine). Maybe I'm just being a leftie bigot but it seems to me that my telecoms costs have gone up appreciably since 2010.
Personally I can't see any real downside to this announcement, my main worry being that HMG will find some way to deliver UK laws that override this "in the interests of public safety" (also known as the "won't someone think of the children" defence)
Last edited by crossy; 30-06-2015 at 02:17 PM.
Career status: still enjoying my new career in DevOps, but it's keeping me busy...
I wasn't querying the changes in costs, but WHY the costs had changed.
If it's all down to the EU, then fair enough. But how can we possibly know that?
Just like, in the arguments over roaming charges, theee are a variety of different pressures, from different special interests. Some want costs down, to increase their market share, others want costs maintained to protect revenue. Yet others, largely eastern europe, currently have low domestic rates which may have to actually rise in order to achieve uniformity.
So what it actually amounts to is a humongous negotiation, resulting in cross-subdidisation from one country to another, or one business service to another, to achieve uniform rates.
And while the EU can oversee arguments, it can't possibly know what market forces would have done anyway, in the absence of EU interference. So, it's maybe good for users, maybe not. Maybe good for some users, bad for others.
Consider this.
A common pro-EU argument is that the EU has resulted in 70 years of peace in Europe, and that argument depends on there having been 70 years of peace in Europe, and an EU. But there is no evidence of a causal link between the two. We might equally argue that 70 years of peace cause the EU.
Suppose the actual cause of 70 years of peace was the soul-scarring experience of two world wars, of economic devastation on both sides, of a lack of desire for round three, of too much effort going into rebuilding to worry about wars, of slow but growing joint economic prosperity, and the the perceived existential threat of a common external enemy, Soviet-style communism, making us stronger acting in harmony than fighting each other. And the EU happened because of that, and is therefore the effect, not the cause.
Similarly, common commercial objectives may have resulted in those same changes, or competition may have led to further, deeper, faster cost-cutting, but for EU interference. Or not. We don't, and cannot, know.
If A happens, then B happens, it is NOT proof that A caused B, or that absent interference, C wouldn't have happened.
If what they propose for net neutrality are considered strong I would hate to see what weak rules would look like.
They've failed to make a distinction between “specialised services” and the public internet, they say for something to be considered a “specialised service” (read fast lane) it needs be nothing more than "necessary" and the defines “necessary” so broadly that anything that is not a “general prioritisation” fits into it.
They fail to define what a “legal obligation” for blocking/filtering might be, the definition is so badly drafted that it could cover activities that are not legal obligations, basically the unelected European Council have all but destroyed the Net Neutrality legislation put before them by our elected MEPs, they've made it less clear and more ambiguous.
Personally while I'd agree that the EU's "diktats" have had a major (beneficial) effect, I think it also naive to assume that they were the only driver. But it's in the nature of politicians to try and claim any credit going...
"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".
As far as my (jaundiced) eye can see the only time that we as consumers see cuts in the costs of mobile telephony driven by the industry is when one, (or more), of the companies concerned decide that they want to build their customer base at the expense of the others. And I can understand their desire to maximise their profits - a desire that goes directly against offering the punters a cut in costs.
The other thing, of course, is that the choice on offer wrt companies seems to be shrinking - with more and more either merging (O3) or getting out of the market. So I'm not seeing a heck of a lot of these "market forces" that the right-wing pundits would have us believe is going on. The big players especially seem to to be thinking "I'm all right Jack", and as a result I'm not seeing a lot of innovation going on. And yes, I know there's isolated examples - Three's roaming deals, GiffGaff, Virgin's rolling contracts.
Career status: still enjoying my new career in DevOps, but it's keeping me busy...
ChatSim has already abolished roaming charges. It lets you chat free of charge and without limits wherever you are for only €10 a year. For people who travel often around the world I think it's the cheapest way to stay connected everywhere. Have you ever tried it?
Seems like an interesting concept, though rather deceptive pricing. €10 a year, when it really costs €30 to €40 to get it...
The initial cost is €10 for the sim card plus €10 for the annual fee that includes unlimited text messages and emoji for a year. Then if you don't want to add a multimedia recharge, the ChatSim chat plan costs only €10 a year and you can text without limits from everywhere
The day we have free global teleportation that may be true.
Until then there's at least another €7.50-15 euros for postage.
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