The IT Nerd

Yesterday, EU lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor for new rules to establish a common charger for all mobile device makers across Europe. Reuters has the details on that:

Members of the European Parliament voted by 582-40 for a resolution urging the European Commission, which drafts EU laws, to ensure that EU consumers are no longer obliged to buy new chargers with each new device.

The resolution said voluntary agreements in the industry had significantly reduced the number of charger types, but had not resulted in one common standard.

Here’s why this is bad. Politicians have a horrible track record of coming up with standards when it comes to technology. While European politicians are better than most, they still get it wrong more often than they get it right. Why is this the case? They don’t understand the technology that they are regulating for starters. And if you don’t understand something, you’ll screw up trying to regulate the something in question. And technology is constantly evolving. So while the standard of the moment seems to be USB-C, that will only last so long before something better evolves and we’ll be back to having multiple chargers again. And in a few years we’ll be having this discussion again. Thus this is going to be never ending. Finally, there are things that are simply not going to fit into whatever bucket that these politicians are creating. For example, the Apple Watch uses a magnetic charging puck. Are EU politicians going to now say that it has to change to USB-C? If they do, then they’re really short sighted.

For those reasons, politicians in the EU should really not get involved in this. Now I like a lot of people would like to have less cables for the various devices that I own, but this is not how you accomplish that.

As of tomorrow, EU roaming charges are a thing of the past. So EU citizens in theory can go on vacation without getting a massive phone bill. It took ten years of hard work to get to this point. But consumers in the end are going to win. That’s a good thing. Right?

Not so fast.

A consumer watchdog has warned that bills will skyrocket as telcos will want to make up the lost revenues from charging for roaming. And it may already be happening according to the Telegraph:

Data is where it gets a little bit complicated. Data is ostensibly the same as back home – mobile phone owners can browse the web, use WhatsApp and stream YouTube within their allowances or at the same pay as you go price, although their signal quality will depend on the local network and some operators have been accused of throttling networks abroad. 
 
However, mobile phone companies are allowed to impose “fair use” policies which means that monthly data allowances are not quite the same as when using mobile internet in the UK. Each of the four UK operators have different allowances. 

So if you were thinking of Instagramming all your food or posting selfies to Facebook while you travel, you may want to think twice. You may not be able to do as much of that as you think and avoid bill shock.

You gotta love those telcos. They’re always thinking of new and creative ways to take money out of your pockets.