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THE NORTHERN IRELAND Assembly’s committee on communications has agreed to contact its Oireachtas counterpart to investigate whether roaming can be abolished within the island of Ireland.
The Assembly committee will look to work with the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications and Transport to investigate whether coordinated legal moves can be brought about to abolish the charges within Ireland.
The contact comes on foot of a report by British telecoms regulator Ofcom, which found that Northern Irish mobile customers living in the border region can pay up to £300 a year in accidental roaming charges.
“It is unacceptable that companies such as O2, Vodafone and 3, which operate across the island of Ireland, continue to impose unacceptable roaming charges on unsuspecting consumers,” said Sinn Féin MLA Phil Flanagan, the committee’s deputy chairman, who added:
These excess premiums imposed by the same parent company is pure and simple profiteering as there is no additional operating costs incurred by the companies.
It is likely that any action in the short-term would focus on the four network operators in Ireland – Vodafone, O2, Meteor and Three – and seek to prohibit those companies from levying roaming charges when customers travel into Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland Assembly does not have power in the field of telecommunications – with competence in that area being reserved by Westminster – so any attempt to block UK networks from levying roaming charges within the Republic would be a matter for the government in London.
Flanagan said any co-operation between the Assembly and Oireachtas committees would “exert greater pressure on the operators to remove all roaming charges, deliver a fair deal to consumers in Ireland and improve coverage in rural and border areas”.
“It is time that the operators stopped ripping consumers off,” he said.
Separate rules being pursued by the European Commission will mean that from next year, mobile customers will be able to change their domestic mobile provider for the purposes of roaming – effectively allowing them to take out separate mobile subscriptions for domestic and foreign services.
Rules already in place limit the price of a voice call to 29c per minute while on roaming, with text messages costing a maximum of 9c each.
Last summer, for the first time, the EU also brought in a limit on prices for data downloads while abroad – with a cap of 70c per megabyte of data downloaded.
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Proper order. I live on the border and frequently take and recieve calls only to end the call and realise I am on the ‘UK’ equivilant and have been just hit for a roaming charge. It’s theft, plain and simple.
No it’s not, it’s stupidity, ever phone has a setting so you only use your own network. Select it and problem us solved.
I’m guessing you do not live/run a business on both sides of the border JJ.
Further to this, All-Ireland calls and texts should be included in current contracts for customers who use Ireland-wide companies.
This is a good idea , good for business and relations etc
Guarantee you O2 Ireland and Vodafone fight it tooth and nail.
It would be easiest if they just introduced separate plans.
I can see it now, Ian Paisley Jr walks into the Carphone Warehouse: “I’d like to change to O2′s United Ireland plan and move my father’s contract to Vodafone’s 32 Counties”
Of course neither would be available on Orange.
That’s quality
LOL…. nice response.
Pure Class, Paddy…..Nice one!
Good on the Shinners
Stupid that they are only talking about this now. Should of been changed long ago
Three alreadt has no roaming charges between whole of ireland and a load of other eueo nations. Google three like home.tis da job.
In theory yes. 3 have a patchy network and one can often get transferred on O2.
I’m on 3 uk, I live very close to the border and when I changed from Orange to 3, it was because there were no roaming charges. About 18 months/2 years ago, this was changed and I’m now charged for roaming…..for me, roaming means walking from the driveway into the house. If I want to use up my free allowance, I have to go outside, manually change the network operator and then make my call or text. Sometimes the network can even change in the middle of me using my phone, this is VERY frustrating, as I’m paying for a service which I actually can’t use.
It is good to see a great idea from a government on this island. This is a logical and indeed necessary step.
Could we have postal charges on an All-Ireland basis too? Should be simpler to organise than abolishing roaming charges (although I support that too).
An Post treat mail to the North as internal mail so an ordinary letter costs 55 cents while the the Royal Mail treats mail from the North to the Republic as European and charges 87 pence.
Example: Bridgend to Derry 55 cents
Derry to Bridgend 87 pence (they are only 2-3 miles apart)!
I have a Northern phone and a Southern phone to try and circumvent this issue as it annoys me when I move to one side of my house, my network changes to a UK one and I get charged. I live very near the Border on the RoI side but then I attend uni in the North hence the added benefit of two phones. In 2012 I was charged, between the two phones, approximately £200 in roaming charges. Partially because I live close to the Border and partially because I have to use my NI phone in the South if i run out of credit and vice versa. It’s a costly, annoying inconvenience. One island and one phone.
Additionally for those who aren’t aware. On Meteor for example you can send webtexts from the North to Southern phones for no additional cost. You could go online on your UK phone and send webtexts to RoI phone on it. Have to get back at them some way!!
Gas that they mention 3…. 3 have by far the worst coverage in NI. Anytime I’m in Enniskillen, I can’t receive 3 coverage. In fact having been around NI a bit in the past 2 years, Belfast is the only place where coverage is good.
It is utterly ridiculous that we have roaming charges within this tiny island. I can travel from one side of the 40 million squre kilometre continent of Australia to the other without incurring roaming charges. With such a sparse population it must be orders of magnitude more expensive (per capita) to operate a phone service for the Australian population than it is for the Irish population.
if it were the same company operating services across national lines, then there’s an argument to have no roaming charges, but if it’s two separate companies exchanging services then they’ll charge for it. Eventually, banks stopped charging other banks to have their customers use their ATMs, so I don’t know why cellphone companies can’t do the same. Doesn’t mean they should be coerced though.
I suppose if governments didn’t charge for mobile phone licences within their jurisdictions it might not be an issue, but they do so it is.
It’s one of the issues that puts EU business people at a huge disadvantage to their US counterparts.
You can generally use your phone anywhere in the US, if you’re on one of the national networks, without incurring voice, data or text roaming charges. It just works.
Meanwhile, in Europe, you move a few hundred meters up the road and you’re gouged!
Even worse, in many cases you’re charged roaming rates by the same company that owns your home network! Vodafone, Telefonica O2, Orange, T Mobile etc should be single pan EU networks at this stage. Instead, this is an area where we completely ignore the concept of a single market and allow telcos to charge us a fortune for exercising our right to move about the EU!
Either we are a single market or we aren’t. I’m getting sick and tired of all these exptional situations where old national barriers to entry are preserved for no good reason other than its profitable!
Err you’re forgetting the one major difference that BOTH parties get charged for the call in the US… which is a ridiculous concept… I don’t think European phone operators have anything to learn from US operators tbh….
Abolish roaming charges provided the Union flag is raised on Vodafone masts on alternate Thursdays :)
O2 Ireland and O2 UK might be both part of Telefonica but they are independent companies, in their best interest to keep the roaming charges. There are no roaming charges for business customers I believe.
02 do hit business customers for roaming, i’m one of them. I’m complained to them several times and I get the same ‘independant company’ line, but that’s difficult to swallow when it’s 2 sides of the same Telefonica coin.
Just another money racket they dont want to do away with.. ridiculous that roaming charges have not been tackled before now seeing its the same operators of mobile singals both north and south of the border..
What about the free market, if it was good for business then I’m sure they’ll do, if not then they shouldn’t have to.
What’s good for business isn’t always what’s good the consumer.
If they are forced to this it will have no affect on their profits, the cost involved will simply be added on to everyone elses bill, whether they use it or not. Hardly good for the comsumer
agree. this happens anywhere there’s a border and it an issue cellphone providers should have dealt with long ago.
(I am also fairly tired of getting text messages from my Canadian provider welcoming me to roaming in the United States – while I’m in my kitchen.)
although, forcing companies to tell you you’re roaming so you don’t run up charges by accident might be a good idea
That libertarian argument doesn’t wash, even when you only consider business because so many businesses rely on mobile phone services.
If you want what’s good for business in general you need regulation.
For another example, what do you think would happen if we completely deregulated the electricity network? The first thing to go will be rural services… or they’d become extremely expensive. And it would be have a net negative effect on the overall population when farmers have to pass on those costs to the rest of us.
Libertarianism is a flawed economic philosophy.
Libertarianism model does work, it is about providing protection for the provision of basic rights, say electricity, heating, health care etc. I don’t think a mobile phone is a basic human right, maybe you do. These are private companies set up to make money, not to make the world a better place.
So maybe the company should take it in the rear for once….
“it is about providing protection for the provision of basic rights, say electricity, heating, health care ”
Pierce, you’re suggesting that libertariansism works in one sentence and in the next agreeing that libertarianism needs to be circumvented (by regulation) in order to assure basic human rights!
That’s a self refuting argument.
The point I was making is that the free market is not always good for the consumer that its from that perspective that I judge that libertarianism doesn’t work. It seems that you agree.
Correction:
The point I was making is that the free market is not always good for the consumer that its from that perspective that I judge that libertarianism doesn’t work. It seems that you agree.
should read…
The point I was making is that the free market is not always good for the consumer it is from that perspective that I judge that libertarianism doesn’t work. It seems that you agree.
this should be done with data roaming also included!
Both Vodafone and O2 used to not charge for roaming in the north. Vodafone changed their position and started charging through the nose last October. I quit them. They also moved their call center from dundalk to newry!!
Vodafone (NI) have an all Ireland / UK price plan. U need to pay £10 extra a month but this allows u use your minutes, texts and data anywhere in Ireland and UK. It also allows you to ring any RoI numbers as well. It has saved me a packet already and I now use my phone as and when I want, not always worrying.
Up north intermittently as have family up there. On 3 and the coverage is crap up north only works in larger towns if even. No roaming charges but other aspect is if u can’t use your package mins, text and data they will still get extra money from u, as they do from me currently.
Great news :-) simple
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