[1st-mile-nm] Data Access Costs in Europe

[Steve Ross]

It is mainly just profiteering. I'm on T-Mobile, which is owned
by Deutsch Telecom anyway. If I roam on a T-Mobile SIM or buy a local SIm
card, my rates are 30% higher than they were a year ago, in dollar terms,
because the dollar has fallen against the euro.  What I tend to do is use
Skype and a Vonage softphone on my netbook, and call on a comparatively
cheap pure wifi network instead.

But T-Mobile unblocked my phone so I can use the alien SIM! Verizon can't
(in its GSM-capable worldphones) and AT&T won't.

Steve

On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 7:57 PM, Bill Feiereisen <Bill at feiereisen.net>wrote:

> I just returned from a business trip to Europe where I was faced with the
> exorbitant costs of data access that have (apparently) been worked out
> between my (two) American cell providers (AT&T and Verizon) and the local
> mobile companies.
>
> On my last trip last year my only data access, other than local wifi, was
> on my Verizon blackberry. At that time I could buy an international data
> package with unlimited data for about $20/month.
>
> In the meantime I have acquired an AT&T iPhone and a Verizon hotspot and
> was hoping to buy an equivalent plan for each, The good folks at Verizon
> told me that the plans changed on January 11, 2011 to limit the amount of
> data to the smart phone and that the costs are now astronomical. Both the
> phone and the hotspot are now limited to rates of about $100 for 75 MB. This
> is so counter productive that it hardly makes sense to buy the data access
> at all.
>
> Does anyone know what has happened and why this pricing has become so
> punitive? Is this just a result of bad negotiations between US and the
> European providers?
>
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-- 
Steve Ross
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