Mobile roaming costs down by 60%, says EU
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Brussels is now looking to see whether it should regulate to make text messaging cheaper (Photo: Wikipedia)
Mobile phone firms' compliance with fresh EU legislation on roaming has pushed down consumer costs for phoning abroad by more than half since this summer, the European Commission has said.
"At the moment, 400 million consumers are protected by the new Eurotariff when using their mobile phones abroad. This means that the roaming charges have been brought down by up to 60% on average," telecommunications commissioner Viviane Reding said Thursday (4 October).
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She added that average prices have even dropped below the ceiling of €0.49 per minute for calls made across EU members and €0.24 per minute for calls received abroad – excluding value added taxes which vary between the 27 EU members.
"[For making calls,] costs have dropped from €1.10 on average in 2006 to €0.49 as a ceiling today. The effective average is 47.41 cents because there are operators which offer prices which are under this ceiling."
For receiving calls, prices have gone down from 58 cents to 24, with the average now at 23.41 cents, she said.
Over the next two years, operators will be required to further lower their prices to the €0.43 and €0.19 ceilings for outgoing and incoming calls.
Since Sunday (30 September) all mobile phone users within the EU are automatically protected by a Europe-wide tariff ceiling – the so-called Eurotariff - when using their mobile phones in another EU state.
The best offer is currently available in the Netherlands: €0.20 for both calls made and received.
Non-compliance on transparency
In general, almost all mobile phone operators capped roaming costs as required, but some operators failed to provide the demanded level of transparency regarding basic price information about roaming.
To increase price transparency, operators were obliged to tell customers about the new tariffs by the end of July. The Commission named one company which broke this requirement – Belgian operator Mobistar.
Brussels is to issue a report by the end of next year to assess whether the regulation has achieved its objectives - and also whether prices for text messaging and data transfers need to be regulated.
Currently, SMS and data transfer are left out of the roaming regulation.
"They [operators] know we feel the rates charged [on SMS and data] are excessively high, as well. They have got an opportunity to demonstrate they don't require regulation, that they can solve the problems themselves," Ms Reding said.
She warned that if roaming prices for these services do not drop sufficiently, regulatory action could be undertaken by the end of 2008.
