By Bill Ray for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
The committee found that international roaming costs between 10
per cent and 20 per cent more than in-country use, but current
charges are often 100 per cent more, or worse, justifying the need
for legislation.
The idea is to cap the amount operators can charge for wholesale
access to their network, and then cap the amount that operators can
charge their customers to 130 per cent of that.
This approach has the benefit of simplicity and will
automatically be applied to all EU mobile phone users if the vote
goes through. The alternative, offering a fixed-price Euro tariff
to all customers, has been rejected as it requires customers to
opt-in and thus be educated as to its existence.
The vote is very likely to go though. Even the GSMA, which
represents the mobile industry, seems to accept that some form of
cap is inevitable and has reduced itself to lobbying on the amounts
concerned.
Proposals to date have talked about prices as low as €0.15 for
receiving a call, and €0.40 for making one, while the GSMA reckons
its members can't make money charging less than €0.35 for incoming
and €0.65 for outgoing calls.
Some operators have shown themselves more than willing to be
flexible on European roaming, especially where the company operates
in more than one country. In the UK most operators offer some form
of cheap roaming tariff, though this hasn't been enough to deter
regulators who are also threatening to legislate on SMS and data
charges unless the industry reduces prices markedly in the next few
months.
Assuming the committee approves the measure, it will be up to
the European Parliament to vote it into legislation in May. The
hope is to have the tariff in operation by the summer, though
the proposal itself accepts that it will take
at least three months, and even up to a year, depending on legal
challenges.
© The Register
2007
