EU Regulates Everything

Vyvyan has revealed her plans as far as roaming goes and surprise, surprise everything is regulated and at a maximum. How tragic.

The charges are all linked to regulated termination rates across Europe:

• For a Retail Customer making a call within a visited country: max charge = 2.6 x Termination Rate
• For a Retail Customer making a call outside a visited country: max charge = 3.9 x Termination Rate
• For a Retail Customer receiving a call inside a visited country: max charge = 1.3 x Termination Rate

Why it will not work is that everyone who is free to chose will pick as a roaming partner the company with the highest termination charge in any given market, since that will maximise its’ revenues.

For, Vodafone who has the biggest geographic network – it is a perfect solution, because they will have the biggest cost advantage compared to the other operators. Just as Termination Rates mean that the largest operator in terms of volume has the biggest advantage, so will this latest roaming initiative.

So in other words it is really for the biggest network and terrible for small regional minnows

This is not law yet and requires approval by the European Parliament and by ALL the EU 25 Members for it to come into force.

I expect a lot of noise from the small island states such as Cyprus and Malta who have a huge dependence on roaming revenues and the small local operators will be the biggest sufferers of the legislation. In order words, more horse trading before it passes legislation.

Also, Vyvyan like her name sake is proving to quite a porky-pie teller. She states in the press release “We are tackling one of the last borders within Europe’s internal Market” I don’t think so… tell that to the Polish plumber who wants to provide services in France and that is before we go on the Energy Market or heaven forbid provision of Public Services.