[jasiek]

Current roaming regulations in the EU are designed with the biggest, transnational players in mind. By subsidizing operations in a less lucrative market using proceeds from other countries, they can bleed smaller national telecoms. They will then proceed to buy them for pennies on the dollar. This will result in less competition down the road, and higher prices for the end user.

[icebraining]

Can you break that down? How do the roaming regulations enable those bigger players to do that?

[jasiek]

http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/10102/2016/EN/SW... - see page 32 (ARRPU). Operators in different countries have different profits per user (obvious). If you have someone like T-Mobile or Orange, they'll use the proceeds from say... France, to finance their operations in say... Poland. This will put pressure on other national operators to further lower prices. Lower prices mean lower profit margins, mean lower dividends, lower company valuation, being less attractive to investors, etc. After a while their value will decline by so much, they'll be willing to sell themselves at the current going price of their infrastructure. Orange buys them, and kills off competition.

[aembleton]

That would be referred to the competition commission and could be blocked.

[jasiek]

This has already happened and no one batted an eyelash. Why?Because, Orange is French and T-Mobile is German.