Comment by graemep

eSIMs help with outgoing calls and data, but people need incoming calls and SMSs too so still get gouged on price.

EU roaming is only a partial solution, as your example of Switzerland. The moment you set foot outside the EU you get gouged.

Interestingly a number of British operators do provide cheap or free roaming to Switzerland. Vodafone has free roaming to a few European countries, mostly non-EU. So the situation in the UK might be better depending on where you are going, which operator you use, whether you are making phone calls or using data.....

This is interesting because I would have guessed that most people would have had broadly similar changes in price to the MVNO I use but just proportion to already higher prices. IN fact, the entire structure is different, and which countries are free/cheap/expensive is entirely different too.

The underlying problem is that these are heavily bundled goods with complex price structures so the operators always find a way to make an excessive profit - very likely an abnormal profit although I have not looked at the numbers I would need to confirm that.