Blog of a Long Distance Worker Tech

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Tag Archives: Costs

Roaming Data Must Change

ZDNet UK are going after roaming charges for data, and I must say I have to agree.

People surveyed about data-roaming charges have described the fees as “extortionate”, “robbery” and “pathological price gouging”.

via Readers vent fury at data-roaming charges | Mobile Working | ZDNet UK.

Simply because of moving from one country to another does not justify the high costs per MB that we all see – for example my provider would charge £3 per MB, which for a little bit of European travel could easily see me charged £600 to £2000 for what would be hardly a blip at home. Of course I have workarounds in place, primarily the trusty MiFi combined with a local Pre-Paid/PAYG SIM which returns me to just expensive data at anything between £20 and £80 depending on how stone-age the mobile operators are in the country. Secondarily there is the Hotel WiFi which ranges from Free to extortionate (i.e. making Roaming Data look cheap) rates.

I do hope that this Campaign for Fair Data Roaming actually does something but I doubt it, it would really require Mobile data to become popular with the Eurocrats in Brussels and  Strasbourg as Mobile calling did in the last ten years to really make a change in my view. The EU forced changes to mobile call rates primarily because the one set of users heavily affected were MEPs who had to travel between home country and the two main EU Parliament locations and thus got hit hard by roaming costs. Heres to the expansion of Mobile Data usage by MEPs!

… and then we have the roaming costs outside of Europe to deal with (£6 per MB+).

Tales of ‘Woaming’ …

In some rather interesting timing, I saw that the EC are to look into the cost of data roaming.

The European Commission will soon launch a public consultation into the cost of data roaming, digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes announced on Friday.

via European data roaming consultation looms | ZDNet UK.

I would say interesting timing, because I got caught by the recent bad weather and had to change my normal travel route. I was in Amsterdam and was due to fly back to Gatwick in the UK on Wednesday, however that morning British Airways saw fit to cancel my flight and I was left looking at missing the conference I was on my way to on Thursday. I booked the alternative that I could find that worked – Inter-City Train and Eurostar from Amsterdam via Brussels, Lille and Calais to London.

You have to know that I use an unlocked 3G MiFi to give myself data access in NL through the insertion of a local SIM. I have the same in the UK. In both instances, I have carefully selected the provider particularly in NL, to give myself maximum flexibility. All lovely.

Then I had to make a trip through Belgium and France, countries for which I had not made any arrangements or undertaken any research on how to get a Sim card that is enabled for PAYG data, and to get it provisioned up for the trip. The way I work, only works for when I travel regularly to the particular country – something that I had not done for these ‘new’ countries. So I was basically screwed for any data access, and I did need it. I got off the train a little early in Belgium and needed to confirm where I had to go to and for some reason the signage was not helping me, resulting in the call to the ‘remote access’ Internet – phoning home and doing the info checking talk through with my significant other. The alternative was to pay £3 per MB (O2 UK’s EU Roaming rate), which with the iPhone would have resulted in a bill of about £30-£40 for the query.

It is at this point that roaming data is a real annoyance, and I hope that the EC investigation results in the reduction in roaming rates to something more reasonable, like £0.20 per MB or a fixed price £10 for 500MB. I can only hope. The other thought I have is I need to research all the ways of getting online in the EU, and even further afield (as the US Roaming Data cost is £6 per MB!)

Mobile Broadband Affordability for the Traveller

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?