European Commission looks to impose cuts on data roaming fees
Published: 23 September, 2008
READ MORE: Europe
Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media - and the scourge of cellcos - is on the warpath again, this time pushing the European Parliament to support laws to cut the cost of texting from abroad.
It seems likely that the measures will be adopted, and would become law by next July and, almost certainly, lead to further cuts in the price of voice and data calls within the EU. Reding targeted voice roaming charges last year, the operators having exhausted her patience with halfhearted efforts to regulate themselves. Now she has turned to SMS and 3G web browsing, provoking further accusations from cellcos that she will make their businesses uncompetitive.
With effect from next summer, the Commission (EC) intends to cap the SMS roaming fee for all EU member states at €0.11 per message. For UK subscribers abroad this will mean a price cut of about 60%, with the cost of an average roaming text being reduced from 23 pence to nine pence.
Last year, Reding placed a deadline on operators for voluntarily reducing the costs of texting and browsing, but this passed on July 31 this year with no agreements in place. Reding is therefore moving to legislation, and said this week "self-regulation has failed and prices remain far too high. The 2.5bn text messages sent every year by roaming customers in EU countries cost 10 times more than domestic messaging and this is unacceptable."
Reding also confirmed that the voice roaming regulation regime that had been due to end next summer will now be extended until 2013 at the earliest, and that maximum roaming fees will continue to be compulsorily cut by € 0.03 per year for at least the next five years.
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