EU agrees on slashing phone roaming fees

[meir]

EU agrees on slashing phone roaming fees

May 15, 2007, 12:15 GMT

Brussels - European Union member states and lawmakers have clinched a preliminary deal on slashing the costs for using mobile phones abroad, an EU source said Tuesday.

The retail price cap in the first year would be set at 49 euro cents per minute for making mobile phone calls abroad, with a wholesale cap at 30 euro cents.

Receiving a call when being abroad would cost 24 euro cents in the first year and fall to 19 cents over time, the source said.

Mobile phone operators would have three months time to implement the new price scheme.

EU governments are expected to decide on the plan in June, in time for the bill to come into force ahead of European summer holidays.

However, EU officials close to the case have said that the new rules could not come into force before autumn due to the bloc's legislative procedures.

The European Commission has repeatedly called on Europe's telecom operators to cut roaming costs and insists that industry has failed to bring them down through self-regulation.

The EU executive drew up plans to regulate roaming rates after finding evidence of huge variations between operators with roaming calls costing some times up to six times those of local mobile calls.

Some 147 million Europeans use roaming services and pay about 8.5 billion euros roaming fees every year.

Roaming rates vary but can account for up to 40 per cent of the price Europeans pay for using their mobile phones elsewhere in the EU. Such 'roaming charges' provide firms with up to 15 per cent of their income, analysts estimate.

[MATHA531]

0,24€ to receive calls...still too much. The original plan of 0,15€ was much more reasonable.

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

0,24€ to receive calls...still too much. The original plan of 0,15€ was much more reasonable.

but compared with the standard 0,6€ which we have in most countries here its still quite a lot better

Chris

[andy]

Being cynical, the ones that have introduced free or cheaper incoming calls, like 3, options on O2, Vodafone Passport, might abolish or change them

[Stu]

Now, if we could get the N. American carriers to go along with this scheme

[andy]

It takes a while to produce an actual document

and plenty more bureaucracy ahead

http://www.erg.eu.int/doc/whatsnew/e...tl_roaming.pdf

[meir]

Just this morning Vodafone CZ have lowered the set up charge for Vodafone Passport from CZK 29 to CZK 22. Valid for EU and Croatia.

[Effendi]

The new EU tariffs in Germany (taken on Berliner Morgenpost 2 days ago)