Vodafone Latest UK Carrier To Reintroduce Roaming Charges in Europe After Brexit (theverge.com) 100
Vodafone has announced it will reintroduce roaming charges in Europe for UK mobile customers from January next year. From a report: It's the latest UK carrier to reintroduce the fees after the country's departure from the European Union, and it follows a similar U-turn from EE in June. All major carriers in the country previously said they had no plans to introduce roaming fees in Europe after the Brexit vote. The fees will apply to any Vodafone customers who sign up to or change their contract from August 11th, 2021, with the fees applying from January 6th, 2022. Costs are dependent on the specific plan, but most customers will pay $2.77 a day to use their UK allowance of calls, texts, and data in Europe, or $1.4 a day if access is bought in eight- or 15-day bundles.
Rebate (Score:3)
Surely, they must offer a rebate on monthly plan because of the money they save, isn't it?
Re:Rebate (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, but Brexit also closed off a bunch of competition from other carriers, and leaving the UK with nearly 40 years of laws including some in consumer protection, that they will need to get to at some point.
Brexit is akin to say New York State or Texas leaving the United States. Where the slew of laws around interstate commerce would be null and void So that states companies will have a monopoly in that area, but also had lost a huge customer base, so they are going to milk any advantage as they can, because they will not follow any federal laws that got in their way in the past, just to get them to increase their profit.
The laws are usually around solving the Big Picture problem, while companies are focused on their own self interests, and for the short term. So they may abuse their customers and do a whole set of nasty things, because they can. Even if that will mean that they will self destruct in 10-20 years because by then a competitor will come in and offer a better deal. But in that time frame a lot of people are going to be suffering.
Re:Rebate (Score:5, Insightful)
Brexit was sold on the basis of "they (the EU) need us more than we need them". That turned out to be catastrophically wrong.
The UK suffers from delusions of grandeur that keep screwing it over. Not just brexit, a lot of internal problems can't be sorted out because people think that way.
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Nah, we just enjoy our queue-free arrivals in other EU countries.
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Right now it's the self imposed sanctions that are the big problem.
There are empty shelves in the supermarkets.
Re:empty shelves (Score:2)
Wow!
Like here in western washington?
Today the Canadians are finally letting some citizens travel that direction, Inslee hasn't recriptocated, perhaps that is a federal stoppage?
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There is always hope.
The news says it is because of china (not that any of us can check) and then they blame truck drivers.
Not the one's driving, they say there are almost no truck drivers.
The story goes that truck drivers, like restaurant staff, are not returning to work after having been shut out by the government forced shutdowns.
It's probably weirder than that, I've heard local restaurant and small stores complain that when their deliveries arrive they are too often incomplete.
That suggests local delive
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Don't know why this was modded troll, it's entirely true. I couldn't buy bottled water or pizza or toilet paper.
The EU does not have this problem. It's not the pandemic, it's a lack of truck drivers to make deliveries because there was a big reliance on EU labour. We need 100,000 extra drivers at the moment.
Re:Rebate (Score:4, Interesting)
Memories of grandeur. Britain was a superpower once. Not just a superpower: The superpower. The biggest. Those days are long gone, but the national ego has never quite been able to accept it.
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You see it a lot with the whining about the EU "punishing" the UK for leaving, by enforcing the rules that the UK helped create.
People feel like the UK should be an exception.
In reality we are getting shafted by countries like Australia, taking advantage of our weakness. Our supposed pals from the old Commonwealth.
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But what does the UK have to offer to the Commonwealth that they really need and can't obtain more easily, and cheaply closer to home? Geographical position matters when you trade in actual goods, and services are a hard sell when you can't seem to stick to your own agreements.
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But what does the UK have to offer to the Commonwealth that they really need and can't obtain more easily, and cheaply closer to home?
Ricky Gervais, Jimmy Carr, Eddie Izzard, David Mitchell, Tracey Ullman, Armando Iannucci. Jaffa Cakes. Smarties. Um. Yeah, that.
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Make CANZUK a reality!
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How is Australia shafting the UK? I'm pretty sure they have only ever been good to the UK (Except cricket).
They are also one of the few countries left IN the Commonwealth. (As opposed to the UK who decided to leave the larger group they were part of).
Seems more and more like the UK was warned what would happen, and now they're upset because it did happen.
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The trade deal that the UK and Australia did is extremely lucrative for Australia, but terrible for the UK.
Even after shipping farm goods from the other side of the world they can undercut us, mostly due to lower food and animal welfare standards. It's so bad that many farmers are giving up, and the UK government has a scheme running that pays them to retire and sell off their land.
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That's the same concern we have regarding a trade deal with the US. Their animal welfare standards are far, far worse than Europe, which means cheaper meat - cheap enough to undercut the British meat industry and drive them out of business.
From the US perspective though, many there regard European animal welfare protections as a form of protectionism - using animal welfare as an excuse to keep out competition from the more-efficient American producers and advantage European farmers who couldn't compete othe
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Yep. In the same way that what we know as present-day Iraq, Greece, Rome (Italy), Portugal and Spain were superpowers... at least they control more or less their ego (while some, such as Greece and Portugal, even have "negative" ego).
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This is the wrong way to think about this. MBAs by and large work for large corporates, who are all despairing of Brexit. The only businesses in favour were some hedge funds, a few specialist businesses with a particular interest (eg sugar), and various SMEs who didn't understand the mess they were creating for themselves.
what about fringe roaming at the NI / IR boarder? (Score:5, Interesting)
what about fringe roaming at the NI / IR boarder?
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<sarcasm>Surely $83 a month is a small price to pay for independence from Europe.</sarcasm>
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Customers need to turn off roaming on their phones or they will be charged. That can even happen in England as sometimes phones pick up signals from France on the coast.
People living in NI have been really badly shafted by brexit, and now can't simply travel over the board and keep using their phones without thinking about it. Their economy has been badly hit and there are shortages, with many companies not bothering to ship to NI anymore because it's too much hassle and expense.
Re: what about fringe roaming at the NI / IR board (Score:2, Informative)
Thatâ(TM)s not true: Republic of Ireland are not included in this. In fact theyâ(TM)re in Zone A along with the Isle of Man and basically treated as before.
TFA even says:
I know you find it hard to resist, but perhaps a good idea to check the facts before you go off on another one of your anti-Brexit rants
Re: what about fringe roaming at the NI / IR board (Score:1)
The narrowest part of the channel at the Straight of Dover is about 20 miles, which is close to the limit of 4G, if they have an antenna on the very edge of the French coast. The distance between the coasts quickly increases from there. Seriously, how many places are there where you can accidentally roam across the channel, even with Vodafone's spotty coverage?
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We still have 2G and 3G in use.
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I have roamed from North Wales to the Isle of Man. Specifically at Aber Falls where the local topology means any masts on the mainland out of sight. It's about 50 miles.
Before anyone asks I got welcome to Manx Telecom SMS messages about the roaming, so I absolutely definitely roamed.
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From TFA:
All UK Vodafone customers traveling to the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state, will not have to pay any roaming fees regardless of their contract.
Thank goodness (Score:5, Funny)
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That's peanuts, come over to Canada (Score:3)
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$10 per day is just for the USA. It's $14/day for most countries.
We can also pay $8 per 50 MB in the USA or $10 per 3 MB in most of Africa.
Of course you need a monthly plan to get access to these special rates.
That's penuts, come over to Australia (Score:2)
I think something like 60c/minute calls roaming to the USA, $2/megabyte (i.e. $2000/gig).
So we all need to buy a throw away sim when we visit, and our telcos actually get nothing. Crazy stuff.
Because we can (Score:4, Interesting)
The last paragraph in the article seems to be the most important:
Roaming charges were abolished in the European Union on June 15th, 2017, but after the UK voted to leave the EU, it had to renegotiate its trade agreements with the bloc. These did not include free mobile roaming, allowing UK carriers to reintroduce fees if they wished.
I was wondering whether this was due to some kind of new fee being imposed on the carriers to connect to foreign towers. But it sounds like the carriers moving in to extract more wealth now that EU consumer protections no longer apply. The fact that they pledged not to reintroduce roaming fees, but now they're doing it anyway, makes it look like "because we can."
I found the level of retardation in their branding amusing. According to the article they offer an “Unlimited Data Xtra plan with 4 Xtra benefits” - they've even outdone Comcast there.
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Ah, yes, capitalism to the rescue. Unfortunately it seems it does not work at this scale since before it was regulated in the EU, roaming was incredible expensive so why should it start working now?
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It's fixed, if it works anything like it does in the US (I imagine so.) New players are screwed by default because they basically have to rent the infrastructure (towers and RF spectrum) from the established players. Best thing you could hope for is that an existing player decides to shake things up. But the status quo is a proven moneymaker, and shaking things up is a risk. You know your competitors won't shake things up, because there are only 2 of them, and they're in the same boat as you. Collecting ren
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It's probably just greed. None of them offered it until the EU said it was going to make it mandatory.
The actual costs are negligible, basically the same as routing a call to another network in the UK. It's all done over IP.
They used to call the UK Treasure Island because it was easy to rip consumers here off. Being an EU member cut a lot of that out, car prices came down, consumer goods got cheaper, food cost less. Obviously some people were not happy about that, hence brexit.
When you can actually buy food
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It sounds like a classic example of opportunism on the part of UK (and/or EU) Telcos... As the last few years have shown, they have been able to operate perfectly well through using a "peer networking" agreement between the major carriers of the member nations, so that you automatically get connected when you travel from the UK to Europe and back again. [It might also be worth pointing out that a lot of the largest providers in the UK are actually EU companies. It's interesting that they are still t
Fees (Score:1)
There are benefits to Brexit (Score:3)
...It's just that a lot of every day British people thought the benefits will be for them.
The poison chalice that keeps on giving, Brexit. If you;re in the UK clearly you'll drink from it, like it or not.
Brexiteers voted for this ... (Score:3)
Brexit supporters voted for this, they were warned this would happen, since EU laws prevented this. They constantly claim they know what they voted for, they knew all the consequences and it was worth it.
I wonder if they will still be saying this when the shops are empty because the government expects 2000 troops can replace 100,000 EU lorry drivers.
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Re:Brexiteers voted for this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Textbook misdirection
A vote for brexit was also voted for weakers human rights, weaker legal rights,weaker workers right, lower environmental protection, more red tape, lower exports.
Brexit is a massive failure and it is getting worse every day.
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Project Fear still alive and kicking I see.
Empty fucking shops. Fucking hell. Get a grip!
EU roaming fees make fuck all difference. A tiny percentage of British people spend more than a few days in the rest of Europe every year. There are roaming fees in the US, in Europe outside the EU, in Africa, Asia, Australia..
Would I give up national sovereignty for a few days of cheaper phone calls that I'm not even going to fucking make because I'm on holiday? Seems that you would.
... as #ProjectReality (Score:2)
Businesses going bust
Fishing industry busted
Farming busted
Logistics busted
Empty shelves and food shortages
Inflation climbing
Pound devalued by 20%
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Thanks for the confirmation that Project Fear is still running, and still full of shit.
Businesses going bust
..due to covid.
Fishing industry busted
Oh? Evidence?
Farming busted
Clearly utter fucking nonsense.
Logistics busted
Nonsense. A temporary shortage of HGV drivers because all HGV training was halted due to COVID and because we're not giving all our work to foreign drivers who take the money home with them.
Empty shelves and food shortages
Utter complete miserable fucking nonsense. There aren't empty shelves. There aren't food shortages. I went shopping this morning, bought kilos of beef, pork, potatoes, vegetabl
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They claimed that the return of roaming charges was "Project Fear".
https://twitter.com/Omz2468/st... [twitter.com]
Like most things labelled "Project Fear" it has come true.
*facepalm* (Score:2)
I feel bad for young people in the UK. What a shit hole country.
If you're in tech staying in the UK is laughable.
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A lot of their work was negatively impacted by their penny-pinching managers and politicians.
An example is the automotive industry, they started off well but in the end the Japanese and others copied their work and then improved on it, something that in the mind of a true-blooded British manager would only cost.
The Germans lost WWII but now manage the building of Rolls-Royce, Bentley and the Mini.
Canada Roaming (Score:2)
Canadian carriers charge for roaming in US, and vice versa - in some cases far more than EU/UK roaming. It doesn't seem to be a catastrophe, and there's no public outcry to demand free roaming.
[yes I know t-mo doesn't charge, but that's not the point]
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Reporting reality = hyping it up.
Re:Canada Roaming (Score:5, Insightful)
Cell prices are so expensive in Canada it's cheaper to buy a US plan and constantly be on roaming in Canada.
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Mainly because people have been under lockdown for the past year and haven't been able to use roaming at all...
There will be outcry once people get slammed with the bills.
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Normal (Score:2)
The Brits voted themselves out of the roaming area and lost the right to roam.
Like quitting your gym membership.
There's no using the showers after that.
Schengen Visa (Score:2)
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"When UK visitors need to start getting visas to cross the channel the inconvenience will be even more"
They even have to pay a fee to enter the Schengen Area (7€) a bit like when entering the US.
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The brits voted themselves out of regulation that *required* the carriers to provide free roaming.
There was nothing stopping the carriers from providing free roaming anyway, other than greed.
This is a case where lack of regulation is directly harming end users.
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It's even more amazing that people keep claiming the UK has fallen, and is falling, even though that's very clearly not the case.
Control for the impacts of COVID and lockdowns, control for the costs of net zero and the UK is thriving. Lots of external investment, plenty of jobs and rising wages in industries formerly dominated foreigners.
It's a good time to be a lorry driver.
In other news... (Score:1)
Unpopular Opinion (Score:2)
Unpopular opinion, but this is fair. It will have a net positive impact on the average British consumer.
Under EU roaming rules, the foreign phone network could bill the customer's UK-based network 3 EUR per gigabyte of data consumed. That's at least double the cost you'd typically pay per gigabyte of data within the UK, and there are more tourists traveling from the UK to the EU than vice versa causing the UK phone providers to run a deficit with their peers in Europe. That "free" roaming in the EU was i