Europe: Public Consultation on MTRs Launched
The European Commission has started a public consultation on the future regulation of “voice call termination rates” in the EU based on a draft Commission Recommendation on termination rates.
At the moment, the decisions of the national telecoms regulators result in very divergent rates across the EU. Mobile termination rates range from 0.02 euro per minute (in Cyprus) to over 0.18 euro (in Bulgaria) and are 9 times higher than fixed line termination rates (on average 0.0057 euro per minute for local call termination). This distorts competition between operators from different countries and between fixed line and mobile phone operators. The public consultation on this proposal will be open until 3 September 2008.
The Commission, after assessing over 770 regulatory proposals by national regulators over the past 5 years, warned that price regulation of termination markets across Europe lacks consistency. It said that gaps between fixed and mobile termination rates and between mobile termination rates imposed by national regulators cannot be altogether justified by differences in the underlying costs, networks or national characteristics. This could have the following negative effects:
The Commission presented a draft Recommendation for convergence of termination rates in Europe, including clear principles on which cost elements should be taken into account when national telecoms regulators determine termination rates, an efficient costing methodology, and symmetric regulation (where the same price caps apply, within a country, to mobile and fixed operators, respectively).
Read the full press release.
Related: High prices and lack of transparency source of anxiety for data roaming customers.
Source: EU
