Public Consultation on EU Roaming Regulation Launched
The European Commission invites feedback by industry, consumers and other stakeholders to review the effectiveness of the EU Roaming Regulation, which entered into force on 30 June 2007. According to the provisions of the regulation, the Commission must report to the European Parliament and the Council in 2008.
The public consultation aims to gather responses by 2 July 2008 and seeks feedback on the functioning and impact of the current regulation as well as on specific issues such as:
- Inadvertent roaming (or involuntary roaming) that happens when consumers use their mobile phone close to the border of a neighboring country and are connected to a foreign network;
- The effect of the regulation on smaller operators and on domestic prices;
- The issue of actual and billed minutes (e.g. whether there has been any detrimental trend away from “per second” to “per minute” billing as a result of the regulation);
- Whether regulation is necessary for data roaming services and text messaging in light of current retail prices and market developments;
- the duration of the EU Roaming Regulation (until 30 June 2010 or beyond).
The EU Roaming Regulation requires operators to offer customers a so-called Euro tariff for voice calls when roaming in other member states and introduced ceilings (excl. VAT) of EUR0.49 per minute for making calls and EUR0.24 per minute for receiving calls. These will decrease to EUR0.46 and EUR0.22 respectively on 30 August 2008 and to EUR0.43 and EUR0.19 on 30 August 2009. At the end of September 2007, over 400 million EU citizens could already benefit from the new rates.
The EU Roaming Regulation is limited to voice calls and expires on 30 June 2010 unless the European Parliament and the Council decide to extend it beyond this date, on the basis of a proposal from the European Commission.
A first report from the European Regulators Group in January 2008 illustrated the regulation’s first positive impact on average tariffs and reported on prices for text messaging and other data services. On average, users had to pay EUR5.24 per MB for data services and EUR0.29 for a text message in the third quarter of 2007.
The public consultation document can be found here.
Source: EC
