EU: Roaming will die in 2014

[Steff1993]

As a citizen of Belgium, with two other countries within a 10 minute radius, I am thrilled about this:

 

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/15/roaming-charges-die

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342037/EU-roaming-charges-axed-year-knocking-hundreds-pounds-holidaymakers-bills.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

 

 

North American readers probably don't have any issues with this but us Europeans do, I live next to the border of the Netherlands and my phone constantly switches between roaming and non-roaming. My friends who live around here have dual sim phones or just dual phones in order to be in touch with their family and friends who live only a few blocks away but yet have to roam in order to stay in touch.

 

I guess this benefits North American users also at some point, when you'll be travelling. My dad has to travel on a weekly basis through Europe and it's hard to stay in touch with these roaming fees.

 

But now I'm wondering what else the mobile carriers here in Europe will do to screw us over, now that the EU is having scrict laws stating maximum rates and now no roaming fees. It's not that they'll stop upgrading their network, because they never did (well here in Belgium, I don't know about the other countries).

 

Anyway first post here on the forums, been a member and have been lurking here for a while but this got me so excited I wanted to share this.

[Anult]

mobile companies will just raise the cost of bill pay contracts, mark my words.

[Steff1993]

mobile companies will just raise the cost of bill pay contracts, mark my words.

 

I'm glad that here you have a lot of prepaid options, with additional benefits (e.g. charge for 15€ and get unlimited data for a month). One or two mobile carriers started this trend a few years ago and since due to its popularity the other carriers had to follow their example as well. The only ones still on a bill pay contract are probably companies/business men and people who are not aware of the alternatives, or just lazy people. Edit: or heavy users where bill pay turns out to be cheaper than pre/post paid

[Thibaudv]

I'm glad that here you have a lot of prepaid options, with additional benefits (e.g. charge for 15€ and get unlimited data for a month). One or two mobile carriers started this trend a few years ago and since due to its popularity the other carriers had to follow their example as well. The only ones still on a bill pay contract are probably companies/business men and people who are not aware of the alternatives, or just lazy people. Edit: or heavy users where bill pay turns out to be cheaper than pre/post paid

What is this 'unlimited' you speak of, I thought in Belgium, the max (without paying a ridiculous fee) was 2GB with shitty operators ( when I'm in a train from Kortrijk to Ghent, half of the time I don't even get H-mobile internet and I'm on mobile vikings.

 

Anyway this is the best news I've heard in ages :p

[Thibaudv]

mobile companies will just raise the cost of bill pay contracts, mark my words.

Of course they will, it's called inflation...

[Steff1993]

What is this 'unlimited' you speak of, I thought in Belgium, the max (without paying a ridiculous fee) was 2GB with shitty operators ( when I'm in a train from Kortrijk to Ghent, half of the time I don't even get H-mobile internet and I'm on mobile vikings.

 

Anyway this is the best news I've heard in ages :P

 

Mmhm was an example don't think anyone of them has it yet, I also have the same bundle as you do. I never hit more than 500mb though since it's so ridiculously slow. Outside I can get a decent hspa+ signal from my house to my college, but speeds seem to be somehow reduced or bad implementation of their technology, I don't know. Same with 3G, 3G technology can hit a lot more than what I get at full reception. But then again it's not that bad, 2 years ago my house was on DSL still, due to the crappy ISP infrastructure I had a good 75-90% signal loss and constant disruptions. My speeds were around 1.5-2.5 mbit down and 0.5 mbit up (on a 25mbit down plan!), my 3G connection was faster at that time. But now I'm on cable and hitting 60-62mbit (on a 60mbit plan) hehe, and paying about the same. c:

 

Mobile Vikings is on Base's network which is now property of KPN, KPN's priority is still the netherlands so we're always gonna fall behind I guess.

[Thibaudv]

Mmhm was an example don't think anyone of them has it yet, I also have the same bundle as you do. I never hit more than 500mb though since it's so ridiculously slow. Outside I can get a decent hspa+ signal from my house to my college, but speeds seem to be somehow reduced or bad implementation of their technology, I don't know. Same with 3G, 3G technology can hit a lot more than what I get at full reception. But then again it's not that bad, 2 years ago my house was on DSL still, due to the crappy ISP infrastructure I had a good 75-90% signal loss and constant disruptions. My speeds were around 1.5-2.5 mbit down and 0.5 mbit up (on a 25mbit down plan!), my 3G connection was faster at that time. But now I'm on cable and hitting 60-62mbit (on a 60mbit plan) hehe, and paying about the same. c:

 

Mobile Vikings is on Base's network which is now property of KPN, KPN's priority is still the netherlands so we're always gonna fall behind I guess.

Lol, I'm paying for a 50mbit connection, and I only get 18Mbps down... (go belgacom!). Hoping a new router fixes this issue as it occurs only when I'm on wifi (well I'm only on wifi actually as my house doesn't have any networking infrastructure).

[Steff1993]

Lol, I'm paying for a 50mbit connection, and I only get 18Mbps down... (go belgacom!). Hoping a new router fixes this issue as it occurs only when I'm on wifi (well I'm only on wifi actually as my house doesn't have any networking infrastructure).

 

I'd suggest you move on, that company is as corrupt as it can be. You'll never get what they promise you unless you are located somewhere near a big city, once you live further away they don't really bother. However I'm not saying the other providers are any good either, mine throttles my speed like mad. When you download a file through http yeah you might hit that speed when the source can offer it, but once you start heavily using P2P (no, not torrents) like Skype they will throttle you. They got in trouble for deep packet inspection a few years ago but now everyone seems to accept it. Their 'unlimited data' means 'fair use policy' which they define as 'the average usage of customers for that plan' which for my plan is located between 250-350 GB (early month) and at the end of the month the cap is around 250 GB. But then again the reduced speeds once you hit that 'limit' are faster than the ones I would EVER get at DSL on my location. It's slow and inconvenient, but it's still twice as fast as DSL.

 

A new router will fix your wireless, but I extremely doubt you'll get more speed from DSL, knowing Belgacom and their infrastructure. If you're a heavy user, I wouldn't move on to Telenet as well.

[Thibaudv]

I'd suggest you move on, that company is as corrupt as it can be. You'll never get what they promise you unless you are located somewhere near a big city, once you live further away they don't really bother. However I'm not saying the other providers are any good either, mine throttles my speed like mad. When you download a file through http yeah you might hit that speed when the source can offer it, but once you start heavily using P2P (no, not torrents) like Skype they will throttle you. They got in trouble for deep packet inspection a few years ago but now everyone seems to accept it. Their 'unlimited data' means 'fair use policy' which they define as 'the average usage of customers for that plan' which for my plan is located between 250-350 GB (early month) and at the end of the month the cap is around 250 GB. But then again the reduced speeds once you hit that 'limit' are faster than the ones I would EVER get at DSL on my location. It's slow and inconvenient, but it's still twice as fast as DSL.

 

A new router will fix your wireless, but I extremely doubt you'll get more speed from DSL, knowing Belgacom and their infrastructure. If you're a heavy user, I wouldn't move on to Telenet as well.

I know, but they have one stupid feature my parents need for their business, so there's not much I can do about it :/

[Steff1993]

I know, but they have one stupid feature my parents need for their business, so there's not much I can do about it :/

 

I was in the exact same position but I wonder what feature then, because eventually my parents gave in, it was getting too ridiculous.

(If you're talking about the blocked ports 1-1024 etc, the business plans on Telenet don't have those blocked)

[Jan.B]

that's indeed very nice to hear (the topic) but I'm wondering when they will lower the bills for f*ck sake..Belgieuuuuh OOh Belgieuuuh

[robot drof 1224]

I'm very happy to hear this. My parents live in Belgium but i go to a boarding school in Holland, meaning that i pay a ridiculous amount to call my buds during the weekend.

 

At first glans it sounds way to good to be actually true though, let's just wait and see how this unfolds.

[Nicktrance]

Awesome, although I'm sure they'll come up with something to make up for it at least I will be able to use data while in other UE countries.

[naca1227]

Well now that EU is a very tight and unified continent I think it's natural, I mean one day there might be an "EU" passport and you can travel to others without a passport

[hehehehhehehehe]

My speeds were around 1.5-2.5 mbit down and 0.5 mbit up (on a 25mbit down plan!), my 3G connection was faster at that time. But now I'm on cable and hitting 60-62mbit (on a 60mbit plan)

-.- I get 500kbs down..... 

[unidentical]

I live in Victoria BC, Canada, on the southern tip of an island and in part of the city my phone thinks I'm roaming in the US.

[RatedBlam]

Well now that EU is a very tight and unified continent I think it's natural, I mean one day there might be an "EU" passport and you can travel to others without a passport

If I remember correctly you can travel inside the EU at least in schengen countries without a passport, all you need is an ID card or something for example I don't need any papers if I want to go to Sweden because Scandinavians have a special deal

You need to show your passport or ID card if you're asked to

[BernardoSLR]

Well now that EU is a very tight and unified continent I think it's natural, I mean one day there might be an "EU" passport and you can travel to others without a passport

Like RatedBlam said, you can do that already. I went to France a couple of years ago and I only needed my ID to prove I'm an EU citizen (in this case Portuguese) and nothing else. The system is unified I think.

[Steff1993]

-.- I get 500kbs down..... 

1.5-2.5 mbit that was so around 250-350 kbyte/s effective speed (I add bit and byte behind my speeds since I tend to get confused or confuse others about my capitals but I believe it is 1.5 - 2.5 mb/s and 350 kB/s). Upload was around, 35 kB/s.

[Steff1993]

 

Well now that EU is a very tight and unified continent I think it's natural, I mean one day there might be an "EU" passport and you can travel to others without a passport

 

If I remember correctly you can travel inside the EU at least in schengen countries without a passport, all you need is an ID card or something for example I don't need any papers if I want to go to Sweden because Scandinavians have a special deal

You need to show your passport or ID card if you're asked to

 

Yeah, valid documents for travelling within the Schengen area are for example your ID, birth certificate, ... stating you were born in or citizen of that country within Schengen so your ID would do the trick. However the Schengen area is not equal to the EU area nor the Europe area, there's some countries that are member of Schengen and not of the EU and vice versa. 

 

Border checks are also non existing here, there's camera's capturing every license plate on entering the country here. This is only used on trucks for customs etc.

[hehehehhehehehe]

1.5-2.5 mbit that was so around 250-350 kbyte/s effective speed (I add bit and byte behind my speeds since I tend to get confused or confuse others about my capitals but I believe it is 1.5 - 2.5 mb/s and 350 kB/s). Upload was around, 35 kB/s.

Ah ok, wasn't sure how you meant that but in that case you where getting around the same speeds as me :P

[Steff1993]

Where's my shoutout for submitting this :c (last wan show). -sad face-