Re:Europe drafts law to ban mobile roaming charges
by Karunamon on Friday September 06, 2013 @03:06PM
(#6342076)
Is it really that onerous (from a regulatory and compliance standpoint both) to say "You are not allowed to charge roaming fees?"
It's not as if they're regulating the price of minutes or packages or something, here. They're outlawing a very particular class of charges with a very particular meaning, with what appears to be a very good reason.
Re:Europe drafts law to ban mobile roaming charges
by fauigerzigerk on Friday September 06, 2013 @04:53PM
(#6342616)
As I see it, they are weakening an important principle of competition law for no good reason at all. If they find that these prices are the result of insufficient competition they should act to change the structure of the market, not fix individual prices. That's just lazy populism.
You need to consider where we come from. Back in the 80s most EU countries had exactly one telco, which was owned and operated by the government. I remember very well that prices back then were exorbitant compared to the US.
When they privatised the industry, they created regulators to make sure private competitors could even enter the markets that were still dominated by the formerly state run behemoths. So all of a sudden there were tons of telcos, they were very well regulated and tried to expand beyond their national borders creating even more competition in the process. That's what led to lower prices.
But the kind of regulation that creates functioning markets is very different from the kind of crude price regulation they are attempting to do now. What we're seeing now is the EU trying to be populist and shake their image as being remote and disconnected from people's needs.
The telecom sector has been consolidating for a while now and we don't have as many players in the market as before. That's what regulators should focus on, not prices of particular services.