July 8, 2004
Mobile strike in Italy - July 15
Intesaconsumatori has organised the first Italian mobile phone strike for Thursday 15 July 2004, reports AGI Online.
"The initiative aims to protest "against Italian phone companies and their excessive prices. Useless reply charges, increase in SMS prices (15 cents each, while in France there are 9 cents), useless services, fraudulent promotions, head spinning prices for phoning land lines, logos and ring tones that only represent that latest business for mobile telephony. But it does not finish here.
There is also the shame of international roaming, already reported by Intesa to the European Commission, with mysterious charges and a lack of transparency on costs for Italian users who go abroad and want to use their phone, and the business of number portability, with companies keeping the residual credit of those who change companies and the enormous difficulties of knowing what company a phone number is attached to. These are some of the reasons that have led Adoc, Adusbef, Codacons and Federconsumatori to embark on the protest."
Recently, French consumer association UFC-Que choisir called for an SMS boycott on 9 May to protest the cost of the service. For more on (outrageous) pricing issues in Europe, check out this category in Textually.org.
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2004/07/004472.htm
