EU Parliament Approves Pan-European Cap on Roaming Charges

This is for sure needed in the EU after all most of the large providers operate in most of the countries and may be this is the lead toward unifying the network structure over there to become Similar to our Nation coverage. That would be good for the competition and my bet is in the end they will also adapt the same of netwrok roaming rules that the Likes of Cingular has.

 

Now that TMobile has its hands tide on roaming rates throughout EUdom, they might decide to start bundling in cheap North American rates to take advantage of one thing that most of its EU competitors don't have -- a US network. I say "most" because of the fact that you can argue that Vodafone has the Verizon network.

 

Well I wanted to say about the one I know that for sure applies the off netwrok roaming rule which is 40% of bucket minutes for 2 months and one is iether out or has to pay a per minute usage. I heard of Cingular applying this more than I heard of VZW or T mobile and etc.

 

I agree with your basic premise. I was suggesting that TMobile which has been advertising cross-border roaming plans could get a competitive advantage by throwing the US in to a global roaming plan and vice versa. The category of users that they would be targeting with such a plan are high volume and high profit customers. I know they make a bundle on roaming, but I think this would pull a ton of cusomers from Voda, 02, Orange, 3, and other cross-border operators.

 

Roaming in Europe used to be ridiculous a few years ago. As soon as you leave your native country you were nickel and dimed to death, even if you were on a T-Mobile or Vodafone network in another country- this has been needed for a while because the operators made bank with EU roaming.

 

I doubt pan-EU networks will happen any time soon. For that to happen the EU would have to have control over, or at least a say in, spectrum allocations. At the moment the member states control their own spectrum allocations. Besides the fact that spectrum auctions can be rather lucrative some members may not wish to give the EU control over spectrum allocation.

It might actually be bad for competition because the larger networks would be best placed to provide pan-EU coverage. The smaller networks may not have the resources to compete on that scale and would essentially be relegated to regional status, which would then mean their customers would have to roam on other networks outside their own network's coverage area, which would defeat the point of pan-EU networks.

Of course it could be the case that the larger networks would buy smaller networks in areas where they don't currently have coverage.

On the plus side pan-EU networks might mean the end of roaming fees and the standardisation of services.

 

I understand your point and I agree with it to an extent, but I think one has to put it in context. Most Europeans probably holiday within Europe, and I imagine a good proportion, if not most, European business travel is also within Europe. Thus offering cheaper roaming in the U.S. might have a limited impact. It would certainly have some impact, but I just wonder how big a draw it would be to those who aren't frequently travelling to the U.S. on business. The point is further reinforced by the fact that T-Mobile USA uses different frequencies for both GSM and UMTS/HSDPA. That might also serve to limit the appeal of such a move if T-Mobile doesn't make compatible handsets available worldwide.

On the other hand if it did have a big impact and was significantly increasing T-Mobile's roaming revenue then it might prompt other European networks to seek involvement in the U.S. i.e. a possible acquisition of AT&T. Of course the only networks which are arguably capable of such an acquisition would be Vodafone and perhaps Telefonica.