Interesting news around the Internets today – BBC News – EU moves to prevent ‘shock’ mobile internet bills.
As a mobile worker around Europe, I have to struggle with the most cost effective way of having data access for both smartphone and laptop wherever I am. This mostly consists of finding free or low cost WiFi at whatever accommodation or working location I am in, or negotiating the local pre-paid/pay as you go market for mobile broadband. The big challenge for more mobile data working is the cost of mobile data itself, which is still mostly charged in MB chunks such as £1.50 to £3 per MB. This is pretty much extortion when you see that non-roaming data can be between £2 and £4 per day with acceptable use policies applying, and the average web page or email today can be greater than 1MB in size.
So it is good news that the EU has moved to limit the amount of money you can accidentally spend on mobile broadband so you do not end up with the £2000 bill for a little bit of surfing, but personally I believe that they should be spending their efforts investigating the true cost of providing roaming data and limiting the mobile companies profits in this area, or at least educating them that encouraging data use is a good thing for them to sell more services.
What do you think?
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