[bOR_]

I understand the the telco's are very competitive, but for some reason, free market competition appeared to fail to have an effect on prices like texting or data roaming. Oddly enough, you roam through various network using the internet, and there free market seems to have worked between fiber providers into keeping the prices low and efficiency high.

It seems that Kroes only launched the inquiry into telco's as part of her commision on competition. The price regulations came after her time there (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_roaming_reg...)

[fauigerzigerk]

The price of something being "high" doesn't mean there is a market failure. It may just be an expression of customer preferences. If high roaming fees are used to subsidise cheap local calls and data plans, that may be a problem for EU officials who travel a lot, but it may be exactly what regular folks want.

The job of the competition commission is to make sure there is real competition, but what they have done is plain old price fixing. In this case, their actions make low income people subsidise the mobile life-style of high income people.

[bOR_]

Isn't it actually the reverse?: don't the EU actions actually stop the previous practice of Telco's to subsidize the calling behavior of the majority by adding additional fees to a smaller group that heavily uses roaming?

I'm not sure what the free-market theory on that is (it is an interesting topic though) - making a smaller group of customers pay (and have limited alternatives but to pay) to be more competitive in other parts of your market.

[fauigerzigerk]

Yes, I think that's exactly what happened before the prices were fixed and it's a completely normal facet of markets. You could make a case that governments should protect minorities. But I see a couple of issues in this case:

The competition commission doesn't have a legal mandate to give preferencial treatment to minorities. They have a very clear mandate and they should stick to it in the interest of seperation of concerns.

The particular minority concerned in this case is a rather wealthy one that benefits from free markets in other respects more than the average person. They don't need extra help from governments.

Helping minorities by fixing individual prices tends to be inflexible because any change in the underlying economics or social culture has to be to be compensated with new regulation which often doesn't happen in a timely fashion.

Preferencial treatment for minorities should, in my view, focus on life and death issues, freedom of expression, legal matters, etc.