Roaming Rates to Become Cheaper in EU
From 30 August, Europeans traveling within all of the 27 EU member states will pay a little less for making or receiving calls on their cell phones. But text messaging and data usage will remain unjustifiably high, says the European Commission (EC).
The price ceiling for roaming calls (the “Eurotariff”) introduced by the EU in 2007 will go down from EUR0.49 to 0.46 per minute (excluding VAT) for making a call and from EUR0.24 to 0.22 per minute (excluding VAT) for receiving a call while in another EU member state.
These price reductions are the result of the EU Roaming Regulation, proposed by the EC two years ago to curb the excessive roaming charges for consumers (on average EUR1.15 per minute at the time).
The EU Roaming Regulation, which expires in 2010, is currently under review. The EC now has to decide whether it will extend the regulation in time and in scope. Under the present regulation, prices for roaming calls will go down a last time on 30 August 2009 to 0.43 euro per minute for making calls and to 0.19 euro per minute for receiving calls while in another EU country.
Besides, figures recently published by national telecoms regulators have shown that prices for roaming text messages and data services remain unjustifiably high, the Commission states.
On the basis of an independent cost analysis and taking into account falling termination rates, national regulators have also estimated that the price caps agreed by the European Parliament (EP) and the Council in the present regulation are around 0.08 euro per minute too high, at both wholesale and retail levels.
Figures also show that consumers are currently paying 24 per cent more than the minutes they actually use to make calls, and 19 per cent more for calls they receive. National regulators also recommend including wholesale and retail regulation on text messaging abroad in a revised roaming regulation, leading to a maximum consumer price of between 0.11 and 0.15 euro per text message abroad (excluding VAT).
A recent report from the European Regulators Group (ERG) shows that the cost of data roaming is still very high for many consumers. In the first quarter of 2008, a customer using data services paid on average EUR2.05 per megabyte while roaming with companies from their operator’s group and EUR5.40 per megabyte for roaming with non-group companies. Italian and Slovak consumers who roam with a non-group company can even pay over EUR12 per megabyte.
Read more on roaming in the EU on the EC’s roaming website.
Related: EU, mobile operators clash over call billing.
Also noteworthy: Analysis of Prices and Costs for Mobile Data
Services Abroad, a report published by the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency.
Source: EC
