In the case of data the legislation is far less developed, and consequently there is a habit of Networks deliberately charging a lot more than cost for “foreign” users.

There was some talk of legislation in recent years but I can’t recall how it worked out.

On some networks I’ve seen as high as £15 a megabyte. Or to put it more practically, watching a tv episode for an hour would cost more than the typical farmily car.

I had a mobile phone back in the mid-90s and once I was out of eastern Massachusetts (I lived in Boston at the time) I was hit with roaming charges as high as $1.50/min. So I made sure to keep my calls short. Now I pay one flat rate whether it’s a local call, long distance or I’m roaming.

I wonder why the same thing hasn’t happened in Europe. After all, one of the benefits which used to be touted by the advocates of European integration is that product standardisation would bring about economies of scale, resulting in cheaper goods and services, as already happens in the US. Curiously, I’ve not heard it for a while.

You should have left it blank. I dare say the comment thread would have been fascinating….

Most of the costs were setup costs. Those are mostly reduced now for basic consumption. You’re then in a market where no company really wants to cut costs to the consumer when the consumer is used to paying for it. More data bandwidth will be available when analogue TV signals die out making further economies of scale.

On top of that, if we are to become the United States of Europe, going abroad has to become ‘less foreign’. Plus the costs are not particularly higher now, imagine the situation where someone on the South Coast rings North France compared to Scotland. Maybe twice as expensive, nowhere near 1000 x

I’m tempted to go back and change the contents of the post to something far more controversial.

Contains everything I wanted to say on this topic.