Mobile phone users thought the EU had come to their aid last year when international roaming charges were capped across Europe. Now, however, the politicians have found a way to ensure that roaming is not as easy as it ought to be. Now it seems you are going to have to get a licence to roam.
The scheme begins today in London. All People Roaming In London Face Online Operation Licence, meaning that if you use a mobile phone on a network which is not your normal one, you will need to buy a licence as an “online operator” before you can proceed.
The idea behind the scheme is to limit the number of people using mobile phones. The bandwidth across Europe is creaking under the strain of masses of data being sent from smartphones and unless the authorities acted swiftly there was a real danger that the entire mobile phone system would collapse. The scheme was planned only in the past few weeks and was rushed through because of the impending General Election in the UK.
London is the first City to get the new licence scheme, but the cities that are already lined up to follow suit are:
- Amsterdam
- Paris
- Rome
- Innsbruck
- Lisbon
The world-renowned Federation Of Online Liberty said “This is an outrageous idea. The authorities in Europe have known for a long time that there would be a squeeze on bandwidth. They have dithered and dithered over the past five years. Now, we are having to pay for their inability to organise things properly.”
They added: “The whole idea that you will have to get an operators licence to use your mobile phone abroad is just nonsense.”
You can, though, find out more about this scheme when you CLICK HERE.
