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Monday, March 01, 2010

Hey presto! Kroes acts on inadvertently high mobile roaming bills

Now that's what you call a quick result on regulatory action.
No sooner has the case of the £8000-mugged Brit student come out in the press, than the Commissioner issues an excellent consumer-saving decision - from 1 July, no bill above 50euros will be permitted unless set by the consumer before leaving their own country. Operators simply cut off service at that point, presumably sending a text to the subscriber at which point they can contact their operator and resume service.
The hope and expectation is that once users realize how shockingly high their per MB charges are, that will help put pressure on operators to reduce them to something more reasonable - we will see.
Its on BBC but not yet on her website - soon, soon...Well done, Neelie! Bravo!
P.S. I realize that (in the works since June 2009) but its a good start and great publicity.... I'm willing to bet the Commissioner has to revisit this in 1-2 years as people appreciate that what should be a 5-10% difference in home v. roaming on their OWN network (T-Mob, Orange, Vodafone) is actually only regulated as a wholesale 20,000% markup. That's quite ridiculous.
Incidentally, 3 of course let me roam in other 3 countries for no more than I do at home, seems they believed in a free market: http://www.three.co.uk/_standalone/Link_Document?content_aid=1220455423498
That said, when they reduced EU voice roaming charges, they did - you guessed it - hike up the roaming rates from North America.
Its time that Ms Kroes and Chair Genachowski sat down to thrash out a 'ground breaking' deal on trans-Atlantic roaming?

2 comments:

hplehofer said...

Of course it's on the Website:
here.

And of course it is not a quick decision - but just article 6a, paragaph 4 of the roaming regulation, published eight months ago in the official journal

chris said...

Ah, I meant HER website - the 'shop window' for the Kroes Commissionship (if that word exists_