EU sets timeline for single telecom market

http://euobserver.com/economic/120149

by crayola • 13 years ago

39 37 13 years ago

Are telecoms which operate in one country (i.e. Germany) unable to operate in neighboring countries (i.e. France)?

mtgx• 13 years ago

There are some big ones like Vodafone, Orange, OTE, T-mobile, Telefonica, which operate in multiple countries, but I think even if you use Orange in one country, and go visit another country with Orange, you still pay for roaming, so I guess they are seen as different entities in each country and she wants the groups to be seen as single entities.

Hopefully this won't slow down competition like in US, and allow for price fixing.

claudius2• 13 years ago

Europe is populated far more densely than the US and there is plenty of competition in individual markets (e.g. Germany), so I doubt that this will slow down competition.

What I really hope it will achieve is abolishment of roaming in any particular form – I have a German contract with German O2, currently stay in the UK and am usually logged in(?) to O2 UK’s network. Yet this is ‘roaming’ and forces me to pay more for calls, while paying less for texts (€0.1 per text by EU regulation rather than unregulated €0.19 at home).

masklinn6• 13 years ago

No (see: Orange, Telefónica or Deutsche Telecom), but each operation will be its own entity with different regulations, different network and different numbering availability. Each country is its own market.

The goal here is apparently to have a single pan-european market, and allow cross-country organizations where e.g. O2 (Telefónica) would be the same O2 in every country where it has presence, without consumers having to pay for roaming and the like. An other goal is most likely cross-european number portability (e.g. moving from Italy to Slovenia, switching operator to a local slovenian one yet keeping the same number).

On the other hand, they also hint at a desire for US-type consolidations and this is pushed by big telco operators, that's extremely worrying.

shocks2• 13 years ago

Nope. UK have Orange, Italy have WIND. They are the same company, have the same branding - same everything - but it still costs me an arm and a leg to use my phone when I'm in Italy.

antninja• 13 years ago

Yes for mobiles. Licences are sold by each state separately. If they were sold by a new EU institution, there would be EU-wide operators instead of state-wide ones.

Alf_InPogForm• 13 years ago

Don't the telecoms companies make huge profits on roaming fees? Would this then mean that the companies would be pushing against this move?

versk• 13 years ago

I'm not an expert, But I'd imagine the opportunities for growth would override the desire to preserve revenue from roaming.

DannyBee• 13 years ago

I think you are confused ;)

They'll continue to charge roaming fees anyway, right up until they lose a lawsuit over it. Why would they do anything else?

icebraining2• 13 years ago

Why would they lose a lawsuit over it?

yxhuvud• 13 years ago

It differs a lot between different companies. Some have a LOT of roaming income, some not much at all.

mortov• 13 years ago

Europe has already imposed increasingly more strict caps on roaming fees and many operators now offer a one-off fee per month for europe wide 'tariff transfer' to take your free included minutes with you as you travel - they get more from that fee than they do from roaming fees. This sounds like the final removal of roaming fees altogether - remember in Europe you do not pay to /receive/ calls in your home area unlike the US & Canada so it is a bit of an anomaly to have roaming fees for receiving calls when you move around the EU.

Of course, the roaming fees /outside/ Europe are now eye-watering.

shocks2• 13 years ago

Yup. 30MB for £15 a month! Wow, thanks Orange. >:(

freehunter2• 13 years ago

>“If one individual would like to watch high-definition films of what one petabyte means, it would take 13 years non-stop,” he added.

I'm not sure what this means.

jwoah122• 13 years ago

Perhaps that 13 years of HD video data can fit in a petabyte?

masklinn6• 13 years ago

Yes, it seems to be a very confused way of saying "watching a petabyte of HD video", and completely fails at giving a sense of scale for a petabyte.

Retric• 13 years ago

13 years of lossy compressed HD video perhaps.

RAW 32 * 1920 * 1080 * 60FPS * 60seconds * 60 minutes /8bits ~= 1.6TB per hour and about 26days for a PetaByte.

k-mcgrady2• 13 years ago

I really liked this until I read this sentence:

>> "Europe has 1,200 fixed operators and over a hundred mobile operators. The US has six mobile operators and China has three."

Prices and competition in the US are abysmal compared with most EU countries. The goal should be to reduce the number of duplicate operators (O2 + Telefonica), not get down to a small number of carriers with little competition.

nakedrobot2• 13 years ago

The shameless and outrageous sodomy of the consumer by every telco in every EU country (especially when roaming) and the vested interest of continuing to sodomize consumers in this way makes me highly doubt that any of these companies have any interest at all in creating a "single telco" market as described in this article.

Tuna-Fish• 13 years ago

> The shameless and outrageous sodomy of the consumer by every telco in every EU country

Speak for your country. I'm pretty happy with the competition in Finland.

vetinari3• 13 years ago

When I'm at home, I'm also pretty happy with both voice and data package.

However, I'm not at home right now and the roaming charges are outrageous. Forget about data (25 MB for 2 EUR?) and the voice also isn't something to write home about.

Btw, UK HNers: could someone of you recommend data SIM of about half a gig, but one that is valid for one week and then I can forget about it? The operators I tried to ask were not happy to offer something non-recurring.

EU sets timeline for single telecom market

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