Commission vows action to cut roaming data premiums to almost zero

Neelie Kroes told operators at an EU telecoms conference that she would give them "a while longer" to reduce data roaming costs, but that the Commission would act if necessary to reduce the extra costs of using data abroad to close to zero.

"I retain an open mind for a while longer about exactly what our next steps should be," she said at the annual conference of European Telecommunications Network Operators Association. "But whatever step we take, it will be part of a broader, more long-term commitment to creating a true Digital Single Market in which no service is artificially sheltered from competition."

"I want the gap between roaming and domestic prices to approach zero. The sooner the better. Significant differences between roaming charges and national tariffs cannot be justified in a true single market," she said.

Kroes warned that the action she is contemplating is more wide-ranging than a minor adjustment to existing controls on roaming charges.

"We will not be proposing another barrier, and nor will we propose endless tweaking of the current price capping arrangement without adding anything new," she said.

Kroes said that as mobile network traffic is increasingly data there is less and less reason for costs to be much higher when users are roaming within Europe than when they are in their own country.

The high costs are a failure of the EU's single market aims, and the Commission must use whatever measures it has to establish a better single market, she said.

"For me a true digital market is a market where effective competition ensures that citizens, customers and businesses do not experience substantially different services or costs when they pass a border," said Kroes. "A true single market is one where the price differences between voice, SMS and data relate only to the actual cost of providing these different services."

"In the future, when all transmission in networks is data, the different approaches we see to pricing for these different services should logically converge," she said. "Therefore I have set the achievement of such a true Single Market for telecoms as a key objective of my Digital Agenda for Europe. I will assess the structural, economic and legal barriers to such a true single market and I am not afraid to propose the necessary measures to overcome these."

The Commission has implemented price caps to cut the maximum fees mobile networks can charge for roaming voice and data services. The caps began on voice fees in 2007 and have lowered since, but the Commission has said that more action is needed.

"The cost of using mobile phones or devices when abroad in the EU has fallen continuously since the adoption of the first roaming rules," said Kroes earlier this year. "But three years since the rules came in, most operators propose retail prices that hover around the maximum legal caps. More competition on the EU roaming market would provide better choice and even better rates to consumers."