Today is the first annual Ada Lovelace Day, a day where we honor women in technology. I pledged in January that if 1,000 other people agreed to blog about a woman that they admire in technology that I would do the same.
Ada Lovelace was a 19th century Englishwoman who is often considered to be the first programmer. The daughter of Lord Byron, she worked on Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, a very early computer.
In honor of Ada, I have selected Viviane Reding, the Luxembourger who currently serves as the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.
Reding has been a longtime advocate for improved conditions in the EU telecom market and is working to make telecom work more smoothly across the entire European Union.
Just yesterday, she called for a European consumer right to be able to change their fixed or mobile telecom operator in a single day.
As she wrote in a press release (and a related video message) yesterday:
While consumers in all 27 Member States currently have the right to change their (fixed and mobile) phone operator while keeping their number, at the moment not everyone can expect it to happen in one day, and some face a wait of two to three weeks, reducing the impact of this important right on competition and consumer choice. On average across the EU, it takes 8.5 days for a mobile number and 7.5 days for a fixed number to be ported.
That’s a bold plan, and one that I’d like to see — even if I’m not an EU citizen.
Last year, Reding worked on the issue of capping the amount of money that EU consumers pay for text messages, voice calls and mobile data. This issue went before the European Commission in September 2008.
The new proposal for reducing roaming prices:
Euro-SMS Tariff introduced: from 1 July 2009 sending an SMS from abroad would cost no more than 11 cents (excluding VAT). Receiving an SMS in another EU country will remain free of charge.
Improved transparency: customers travelling to another Member State should receive an automated message of the charges that apply for data roaming services. On 1 July 2010, operators must provide customers with the opportunity to determine in advance how much they want to spend before the service is “cut-off”.
Merci Viviane, for all your hard work! I hope to see all of these great ideas enacted soon!
