EU Roaming prices down next Summer

Starting next July 1^st, calling, texting and mobile internet surfing whilst abroad in the EU will be cheaper.

The Industry, Research and Energy committee of the European Parliament voted in favour of lowering mobile-phone roaming charges endorsing a political agreement reached informally last week between EP and Council representatives. The report on the “Roaming 2” regulation, drafted by ALDE MEP Adina Valean extends the regulation for voice roaming and widens the scope of the regulation to include roaming SMS and data services, as well as including more transparency measures.

Adina Valean (PNL, Romania) said: “I am very happy to have successfully negotiated an improved Roaming Regulation, which has been supported by stakeholders. The improvements consist of reaching lower price ceilings for roaming calls made and received, earlier than initially proposed, much lower limits for data transfers between operators (which should result in lower prices for consumers for mobile internet), a prohibition of charging customers for receiving voice messages while roaming, a more flexible system to prevent bill shocks and more transparency on prices.”

“When you are abroad in the European Union, you should not have to pay excessive prices for a phone call. When you need to access the internet abroad, the price should not be several times higher than in the home country. These are ways, in which we can eliminate the barriers that still exist in the EU”, she added.

The EP rapporteur further underlined: “I am convinced that in the long-term, the best way to ensure fair prices is to have conditions for proper competition and that should be our focus when we look again at this issue in two years time, on the basis of a thorough review by the European Commission, with alternative options for regulating roaming services.”

The compromise does not fix roaming prices at rates set by the EU, but sets ceilings beneath which mobile operators can compete by offering lower prices. That ceiling for voice calls will be lowered year on year until 2011, starting with €0.43 per minute (excluding VAT) for outgoing and a maximum of €0.19 per minute (excluding VAT) for incoming roaming calls from 1 July this year. The operators would have to charge their customers by the second but can apply an initial minimum charging period of 30 seconds, to cover for their set-up costs.

SMS and data roaming services will be also cheaper. A text message (SMS) should cost a maximum of €0.11 (excluding VAT) from 1 July 2009. Due to a reduction in the charges that operators apply to one another at wholesale level for data roaming services, the prices for sending emails and pictures or web-browsing from mobile phones or laptops while roaming should also decrease.

To prevent “bill shocks” (sometime reaching thousands of euro’s), unless consumers decide otherwise, operators will have to apply limits to consumption of data while roaming, with a default limit which must not exceed 50 € per month.