International roaming allows mobile phone users to make
and receive calls and text messages while travelling abroad. Each
nationally-based mobile operator has established agreements with
overseas networks that allow its customers to use their mobile
phones in many countries around the world, providing their handset
is compatible with those networks.
But consumers and regulators have long complained that the
charges imposed for international roaming are excessively high. The
Commission agrees.
“It is high time that the EU’s internal market delivered
substantially lower communication charges for consumers and
business people travelling abroad”, said Information Society and
Media Commissioner Viviane Reding. “A mobile phone customer should
not be charged a higher tariff just because he is travelling
abroad.”
In October 2005 the Commission called on operators to reduce
their charges, and set up a website showing the cost of various
cross-border mobile phone calls. Six months later, it has updated
the website, revealing that the price for a standard four-minute
call has generally remained at the same high level and in some
cases has increased.
The site shows that in the UK, one operator has increased the
price for roaming from €3.45 to €4.92 when consumers call home
across the EU, while Lithuanian customers pay between €4.41 and
€12.08 for a four minute call from France.
According to the Commission, special roaming packages offered by
some operators have not been widely taken up by consumers since
most of these tariffs are offered on an opt-in basis or may have an
additional monthly charge attached to them.
It reveals that only in a few exceptional cases has some
progress been made. An operator in Belgium has introduced a flat
rate for roaming which has brought down the price from €7.20 to
€4.40 for a call home while roaming in Cyprus. In Ireland, the
Commission’s first announcement of regulatory measures on roaming
was followed by the elimination by several operators of roaming
charges for travellers to the UK.
The Commission is therefore working on a proposal for an EU
Regulation to bring down international roaming charges on the basis
of internal market principles. The main elements of the proposal
are:
- The new Regulation should address inter-operator tariffs
(wholesale prices). It should ensure that operators do not charge
operators from other countries substantially more than the actual
cost.
- To ensure that operator savings at the wholesale level are
actually passed on to the consumer, the Commission sees also a need
for regulation at the retail level.
- It could in particular eliminate all roaming charges for
receiving a call when travelling abroad in the EU.
- In addition, for calls made while travelling abroad in the EU,
the new Regulation could introduce the “home pricing” principle. A
mobile customer travelling abroad in the EU would always be charged
only the prices that he is used to paying in his country of
residence: he would either pay a local tariff when making a local
call, regardless of where he is travelling in the EU (e.g. for
calling a cab while travelling in Madrid); or a normal
international tariff for calls made to EU destinations, regardless
of where he is travelling in the EU (e.g. for calling the family
back home while on holidays).
The Commission has already consulted on what form the Regulation
should take, and plans to launch the second phase of its
consultation on 3rd April. This will be open to all interested
parties until 28th April 2006. The Commission then aims to formally
propose a Regulation to the European Parliament and Council by the
end of June.
Mobile phone trade associations are unhappy with the proposals.
According to the GSM Association (the GSMA), they are
unprecedented, unnecessary and heavy-handed.
“Enabling consumers to use their mobile phones on a pan-European
basis is a value-added service and mobile operators should be able
to charge a market-rate for this service,” said Rob Conway, CEO of
the GSMA and member of the board. “Moreover, it is inappropriate to
regulate tariffs at a pan-European level as the commercial and
regulatory factors in each national market are different.”
The GSMA also believes that the European Commission’s proposed
consultation period of 18 working days is inadequate and falls well
short of the Commission’s own internal requirement of eight
weeks.
According to Michael Bartholomew, Director of the European
Telecommunications Network Operators Association (ETNO), “Such a
heavy intervention, at both the wholesale and retail levels, would
be unprecedented in the mobile market and appears disproportionate.
It risks hampering competitiveness of the industry.”
