EU Regulation About to Reduce Mobile Roaming Charges

The EU's 27 Telecom Ministers will gather on 15 March at the CEBIT IT fair in Hannover/Germany for an informal EU Telecom Council that could pave the way for a historic early adoption of the EU roaming regulation proposed by the Commission on 12 July 2006. For the European Commission, EU Telecom Commissioner Viviane Reding will attend the meeting.

With its proposal of 12 July 2006 for an EU regulation on mobile roaming in the internal market, the European Commission seeks to reduce by up to 70% the charges consumers currently have to pay for using their mobile phone abroad.

To achieve this, price ceilings are set both at wholesale and at retail level to ensure that mobile roaming charges are not unjustifiably higher than those incurred by domestic mobile phone use. Below these ceilings, competition should take place for the most attractive roaming packages.

The EU roaming regulation also will enhance price transparency. It obliges mobile service providers to give personalized information on retail roaming charges to their roaming customers – on request and free of charge. Moreover, a customer subscribing to an operator will be able to receive detailed information on roaming and operators will have to keep the subscriber informed periodically on roaming charges.

The regulation includes short message services (SMS) and Multimedia Message Services (MMS) in their scope, but caps the roaming prices only for voice services. It requires national regulators to monitor developments in the prices of roamed SMS and data services closely. 

The Commission calls on mobile operators to demonstrate very clearly, in the upcoming weeks their willingness to voluntarily reduce the very high roaming charges for SMS and data roaming. Such a step would make it possible to avoid that also these charges need to be regulated.

The Commission is confident that the European Parliament and Council can reach an agreement in the first reading on the EU Roaming Regulation before the summer. Of course, to achieve this, further close cooperation between Parliament and Council will be necessary.

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