<story><title>Europe drafts law to ban mobile roaming charges</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/sep/05/europe-law-ban-mobile-roaming-charges</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JoshTriplett</author><text>&amp;gt; it will remove unmerited earnings&lt;p&gt;If people are currently paying roaming costs, then the earnings are clearly merited.  You might find the practice distasteful, and wish it did not exist, but that does not make it illegitimate; they found something the market would pay for, and successfully got the market to pay for it.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no monopoly on cell carriers, as evidenced by the three separate carriers mentioned just in the sentence you quoted.</text></item><item><author>masklinn</author><text>&amp;gt; Her proposals have faced fierce opposition from the largest networks, including Vodafone, Orange and Telefónica, which say the end of roaming within Europe could cost them €7bn (£5.9bn).&lt;p&gt;Delicious tears.&lt;p&gt;Though I object to the use of the word &amp;quot;cost&amp;quot;, it will remove unmerited earnings but will not add costs to their balance sheet: notice how the operators whining the most are the pan-european ones? That&amp;#x27;s because they can currently charge roaming fees for operations within their network, fleecing their own users.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anologwintermut</author><text>Ok, first, there is an oligopoly of cell phone carriers: you don&amp;#x27;t actually have enough for it to be a free market. Second, you likely don&amp;#x27;t want there to be enough real carriers(i.e. with their own towers), for there to be a free market. That would involve massive amounts of wasted infrastructure. Thankfully, third, because of those infrastructure costs, it&amp;#x27;s unlikely you&amp;#x27;d ever see that many cell phone carriers. Cell phone infrastructure isn&amp;#x27;t quite a natural monopoly[0], but it&amp;#x27;s close.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Natural_monopoly&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Europe drafts law to ban mobile roaming charges</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/sep/05/europe-law-ban-mobile-roaming-charges</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JoshTriplett</author><text>&amp;gt; it will remove unmerited earnings&lt;p&gt;If people are currently paying roaming costs, then the earnings are clearly merited.  You might find the practice distasteful, and wish it did not exist, but that does not make it illegitimate; they found something the market would pay for, and successfully got the market to pay for it.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no monopoly on cell carriers, as evidenced by the three separate carriers mentioned just in the sentence you quoted.</text></item><item><author>masklinn</author><text>&amp;gt; Her proposals have faced fierce opposition from the largest networks, including Vodafone, Orange and Telefónica, which say the end of roaming within Europe could cost them €7bn (£5.9bn).&lt;p&gt;Delicious tears.&lt;p&gt;Though I object to the use of the word &amp;quot;cost&amp;quot;, it will remove unmerited earnings but will not add costs to their balance sheet: notice how the operators whining the most are the pan-european ones? That&amp;#x27;s because they can currently charge roaming fees for operations within their network, fleecing their own users.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>njs12345</author><text>Roaming charges are too high and I want to start a new cell carrier to compete on this basis. How would you suggest I go about it?</text></comment>