European flat fee for data coming soon

Posted by on Jul 1, 2010 in Industry | 2 comments

Earlier this morning Vincent Van Quickenborne (Belgian minister for ICT, telco, economy and reform) moderated a debate with Neelie Kroes (Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe). Vincent Van Quickenborne was asking his Twitter followers for questions he should ask her. I asked what her plans were for the outrageous data roaming charges in Europe. Her answer sounded like music to my ears:

This is fantastic news!

Most of the European carriers are owned by only a handful of big telcos (like France Telecom, Vodafone, …) and this should be a no-brainer. But they obviously make a lot of money from roaming and if no one tells them to change their price structure, they won’t. Now that Neelie’s on the case it looks like data roaming across Europe may soon/finally become affordable.

PS: It’s great to see Neelie Kroes on Twitter!

2 Comments

  1. Cyril Hanquez
    July 1, 2010

    Could I only believe this?!? It would be a fantastic news! At last…

  2. Georges Jentgen
    July 1, 2010

    Coming from Luxembourg, this would be soooo amazing. It just takes a few minutes to be off border and then your offline… noone want’s to pay for roaming! :)