A dimple in the chin, a devil within - Irish proverb
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EU plans to cut roaming rates further
THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) has drafted a plan to push down even more than originally planned the fees that mobile operators charge users travelling abroad.
According to Reuters, the EU Parliament is pushing for much steeper reductions in roaming fees than proposals made last year by European Commissioner Neelie Kroes.
The draft proposes that the fee for an outgoing call when abroad should be 15 cents rather than the original plan for a one-third cut to 24 cents. Internet costs would be slashed to 20 cents per megabyte from 50 cents.
Mobile operators say they gain five per cent of sales and seven per cent of operating profit from roaming fees, meaning the changes will have a big bite. This could cause the operators to raise their prices elsewhere.
The measures will be debated in the next few months, and the EU hopes to come to a compromise set of regulations to be be phased in over three years. µ
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Within days of the mobile phone companies being told by the European Union to drop their roaming charges a few years ago, the price of calls to my non-EU girlfriend shot up by 25% and the special deals for frequent international callers were changed so that for me they didn't save me money any more. They'll just increase charges elsewhere to recover the lost revenue again this time. No large corporation is going to let government beaurocrats tell them how much money they can make (or, in the UK, how much tax they should pay).