Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Wednesday 16 January 2008, 5:06 PM
More on that O2 data-roaming cut
Needless to say, when we learned that O2 was to slash its charges for data-roaming, one of the first organisations we called was the European Commission. After all, they're the ones who've been rattling their sabres - we are merely campaigners.
We wanted to know whether O2 had decided to more than halve those rates just out of the blue, or whether Commissioner Reding's office had been involved. We got a rather apprehensive response that ran along the lines of "looks good, let's see what the others do now".
Belatedly, we got this further reply today: "There are regular meetings between the European Commission and the Telecoms operators. However, on this precise case, the Commission has not discussed with Telefonica/O2 on its announcement to cut data roaming charges."
I wonder what brought on this fit of altruism, then...
We wanted to know whether O2 had decided to more than halve those rates just out of the blue, or whether Commissioner Reding's office had been involved. We got a rather apprehensive response that ran along the lines of "looks good, let's see what the others do now".
Belatedly, we got this further reply today: "There are regular meetings between the European Commission and the Telecoms operators. However, on this precise case, the Commission has not discussed with Telefonica/O2 on its announcement to cut data roaming charges."
I wonder what brought on this fit of altruism, then...
PreviousComments on this post
Perhaps O2 invested a lot in it's data network in expectation of heavy iPhone usage with the unlimited data plans. Since uptake on the iPhone has been very low this data network is not being put to use and so O2 would rather slash the cost to encourage usage and perhaps gain more customers.
Ah, but that's the EDGE network you're talking about, not 3G/HSPA (and O2 only has that in the UK, whereas T-Mobile have the iPhone EDGE network in Germany, Orange in France etc).
Never fear - we shall get to the bottom of this!
