Two mobile phone rip-offs abolished and a Net Neutrality agreement reached – Huzzah for Regulators and the EU!

From tomorrow, calls to 0800 are free from mobiles!

It’s the end to a despicable practice that Ofcom has allowed for – what, 35 years? – making a total nonsense, not to say lie, of ‘freephone’ numbers.

Sadly it comes with a series of other changes to 08xx which are not so good and will cause endless confusion and bigger phone bills – see an earlier blog here.

Even so, this is good news.

The other good news is that biggest rip-off of all, mobile roaming surcharges, will be abolished across Europe by 2017. Apparently it was a very long and difficult campaign and has resulted in a bit of a short term compromise with a limit on the roaming surcharges being applied from April 2016:

€0.05 (3.5p) extra per minute for calls
€0.02 extra per SMS sent
€0.05 extra per megabyte of data used

All of which will apparently make roaming within the EU 75% cheaper during the interim period. But after that, no surcharge, sir!

But that’s not all…

The Latvian presidency – ITSPA’s Internet Hero of 2015 – has got through a good net neutrality decision prohibiting VoIP being blocked by third parties and limiting the amount of interference of other traffic. ITSPA’s illustrious Chairman, had these words thrust into his mouth by the ITPSA PR massif

“These regulations are a sensible compromise; they will keep the internet open but they will also allow network operators to manage the network efficiently and develop new services for the future. This is great news for the VoIP industry and everyone who uses the Internet. The Latvian Presidency of the EU has worked hard on this and should be congratulated.”

Indeed.

A very good day for regulators and Europe.

(Never thought I’d say that)