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Re:More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights by vanderZwan on Saturday February 15, 2020 @04:06PM (#22337968)
> Forcing roaming prices down just pushed up other tariffs

I pay less than twenty euros a month for 10 GiB of data throughout all of Europe. What are you talking about?

Re:More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights by thu2111 on Sunday February 16, 2020 @07:41AM (#22341285)
The phone companies lost a lot of money when roaming tariffs were forced down and that was reflected in tariffs for the majority of people who never roam. There are studies about this. Did you think that in the relatively competitive mobile market price controls can be enforced with no impact at all? It was a form of wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.
Re:More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights by vanderZwan on Sunday February 16, 2020 @08:11AM (#22341394)
> The phone companies lost a lot of money when roaming tariffs were forced down and that was reflected in tariffs for the majority of people who never roam. There are studies about this.

Then show those studies, because as I'm pointing out, my "tarifs" have not increased in the slightest.

Re:More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights by thu2111 on Monday February 17, 2020 @04:56AM (#22346598)
There's some discussion on Wikipedia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulat...

In Norway, prices increased by 66% when RLAH was introduced.[20] The same argument was being used by Danish operators. In Denmark several operators increased monthly subscription prices by 10–20 DKK.[21]

Swedish operator Comviq removed roaming services on its plan “Fastpris mini” 15 June 2017.[22] The operator Hallon is doing the same to its smallest plan “LITEN” starting 1 October 2017.[23] In Denmark, operator Telmore introduced "TELMORE Home" without roaming services, even when travelling to countries outside the EEA.[24] Vodafone UK introduced "UK-only plans" that disallow roaming altogether.[25] This is possible because, while the Regulation disallows operators from charging extra for roaming when available, it does not force them to make roaming available in the first place.

Of course, price rises are very unpopular. History gives us lots of experience of price controls to draw on. The effects of price controls are often subtle and hard to anticipate. For instance, unavailability of new services for which the investment can no longer be justified, cutting R&D budgets, elimination of services to some customer segments entirely and so on.

If you look at KPN in the Netherlands, the cost of the price controls is estimated at being 100M euros or more.

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/...

Their yearly net profit in 2018 was about 292M euro. So price controls aren't enough to cripple these businesses, they can absorb the hit. But obviously forcing people to spend money on something isn't free, even if the effects are obfuscated.