EU competition inspectors RAID European telcos

The competition wing of the European Commission confirmed today that it was investigating alleged antitrust practices among a number of telecoms giants operating in the 28-member-state bloc. It declined to comment on which countries and companies were subjected to unannounced inspections on their premises at the beginning of …

[SuccessCase]

Why not add UK mobile companies as well. Charging exorbitant sums for overseas data, when there are no interconnection costs and you are simply connected to the net directly via a local point of presence, is in my book profiteering plain and simple. It's like hotel mini-bar prices, but with no option buy drinks from the bar (with the exception that I now swap my SIM for one from a local provider out, but this doesn't excuse the Telecoms firms because a) you lose your number if you do this b) many punters can't do that because the phone is locked).

If they want us Brits to look a little more favourably on the EU than we currently seem to, perhaps they should be adding UK Mobile Telecoms firms to the charge sheet.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Because fscking customers over with high prices is perfectly legal.

If the UK telco had done a secret deal with a foreign telco where they detected you had put in a local SIM and still charged you international prices - that would be anti-competative and get them raided.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the world coming to when bureaucrats step in to stop businesses making huge amounts of money on the backs of the consumer? Why now, unless they weren't getting a fair cut from it?

[totaam]

they have done just that

They've capped european roaming fees a number of times, both for voice and data.

Everytime they've done that, the telco lobby came out saying: "we're disappointed at this decision, we've always been trying very hard to provide good value for our customers, this will impact our ability to invest and provide better service" - lies basically.

They've been mugging us for years and if it wasn't for the EU, they would have continued to charge us 100,000 times more than it costs them (give or take), now it's only in the hundreds or thousands... progress of sorts.

[AndrueC]

The Register understands that no such inspections were carried out in Britain.

Because BT has outsourced all its staff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also consider

Chennai and Bangalore are not part of europe yet......

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Cooperative duopolies wrk grt in US. (Keep post shrt so uplds faster)

[Anonymous Coward]

IP scheduler

Should check very well which kind of QOS or priority packet schedule they have developed in each node/network.

I'm sure that most EU ISP have downgraded VoIP _unconsciously_ :P

BTW: Mobile ISP are well-know for these practices.