Free Republic

A Florida man has revealed how he and his wife were stung with a $143,000 bill after a three-week vacation to Europe last year. Rene Remund, 71, lives with his wife Lynda, 65, in Dunedin, Florida, but is originally from Switzerland. In September, the couple returned to the town in which he grew up and enjoyed 'magical' moments with family and friends. Many of those moments were captured in photographs, which were sent back to the U.S. using cellular data. But it appeared to come at a cost. The couple returned home to shocking cell phone charges from their carrier,...

A Polish charity has been hit with a massive phone bill after a GPS tracker it had put on a stork was stolen. In April 2017, Polish environmental group EkoLogiczna placed a GPS tracker on the back of Kajtek, a white stork, to collect data about the bird’s winter migration route as well as its feeding habits. In the year that followed, Kajtek travelled some 6,000 kilometres but was last recorded on 26 April in the Blue Nile Valley in eastern Sudan.In a Facebook post, the group explains that “for unknown reasons” Kajtek stayed in the area for over two...

Roaming fees for voice calls, texts and internet access will effectively be completely scrapped under the proposals, which are part of a broader effort to create a single European telecoms market. The group of 27 European Commissioners voted in Brussels on Tuesday to drive the package through in time for the European elections in May next year, to come into force as soon as 1 July 2014. … They expect the death of roaming charges to typically wipe 2 percent off mobile operators’ revenues … The reforms are designed to encourage radical consolidation of European mobile network operators. A source...