Green light to lower roaming tariffs in the EU

On 28 February, the European Parliament voted in favour of a compulsory reduction of cross-border mobile tariffs, to enable best tariffs for consumers while ensuring a sufficient margin between wholesale and retail prices to assure a level of competition that can bring down prices.

The parliamentarians propose  to lower costs for roaming calls to 15ct per minute and for internet access to 20ct per Megabyte (or 200€ per Gigabyte) until 2014. While those prices are still higher than what would have been appropriate according to the European telecom regulator BEREC, they are an improvement over older proposals by the European Commission.
The Industry committee also suggests requiring operators to offer retail roaming services separately from 1 March 2014, so that customers can choose an alternative roaming service supplier for foreign calls while retaining their national operator for domestic use and keeping their phone number.

Europeans for Fair Roaming initiative

The European citizens’ Initiative “Europeans for Fair Roaming” welcomes the new proposal of the European Parliament to lower roaming charges in Europe but remains committed that prices could be lower.

Bengt Beier, coordinator of the citizens’ initiative Europeans for Fair Roaming stated: “We welcome the newest decision by the European Parliament, even though they are not as courageous as we hoped. Our demands for fair roaming regulation – no more than 11ct per minute for making calls, free receiving of calls and a maximum price of 100€ per GB for internet were based on serious numbers as has now also been proven by BEREC. There is no reason why consumers should pay up to 200€ per GB for using their internet when abroad. The same service costs only a fraction of that at home.”

More about “Europeans for Fair Roaming” initiative
More information

“Europeans for Fair Roaming”, a new initiative for lower roaming charges across the EU

The roaming charges currently levied by mobile operators within the EU are detrimental to European integration and the competitiveness of the European market - it essentially means that virtual borders remain for communication inside the EU where real borders have become invisible.

“Europeans for Fair Roaming” call for a faster reduction in prices, free receiving of calls when roaming and the extension of consumer protection mechanisms to other countries outside the EU. The initiative considers that price caps for data roaming are still much higher than they should be to allow consumers to use their phones abroad. The proposed price caps (500-900 EUR / gigabyte) are still unduly high considering that the cost for operators to provide one gigabyte of data today is in the region of 1 EUR.

“Europeans for Fair Roaming” already expanded to a network of more than 1500 individuals, 10 MEPs from different political groups and 11 organisations (including big organisations such as JEF and ZDNet) representing/reaching about 125.000 people.

You may find out more and join the initiative here

Prices for voice, SMS and data roaming to be cut down to level of national tariffs by 2014

A new EU roaming regulation is expected to be announced this Wednesday 6 July to resume the fight against high mobile phone prices.

The European Commission will propose to cap voice, SMS and data roaming at levels similar to national tariffs by 2014, as well as end the price gap between national and cross-border mobile services.

The proposed rules will introduce innovative ways to structurally reform the supply of mobile services, proposes to slash the wholesale prices that operators pay to use each other's networks, implement measures to enable new "virtual" operators to enter the market, and much more.

Before being applied, the regulation will have to pass the scrutiny of the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers.

More information
Download the legal text of the EU roaming proposal