| Mobile Roaming Rates: The ERG speaks up
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| Written by HiVoltage |
Thursday, 11 May 2006
Those of you who have used the mobile phone while abroad, know that the
roaming prices are ridiculously high. Recently, we did see some slight
reductions, but the prices are still high enough to be described as
unreasable. The guys at the European Commission seem to be highly upset
by all this, and for that reason, on February 8th, they released a
document with some proposals, followed by a highly controversial
public consultation document on 3rd April. The EC is accepting
comments and proposals until tomorrow, 12th May regarding the latter
document. In it, the EC proposed a number of drastic measures to
enforce price reductions, with the most strict one proposing that the
operators should charge their customers the same amount while abroad
that they would charge them in their home country. As expected, the
mobile operators didn't like what was written, and most of them
described these proposals as being unfair and stating that they would
undermine profitability and competitivity.
Today, a few hours
before the deadline for submission of comments, the European Regulators
Group (ERG), which is an advisory group representing the national
telecom regulators of the individual EU countries (MCA in our case),
published a press release regarding this matter. In its press release,
ERG stated that while it fully agrees with the EC regarding the fact
that mobile roaming prices are too high and that they must be
regulated, the measures proposed by the EC were too drastic. The ERG
proposed that a price cap of around 30 Eurocents should be enforced on
wholesale roaming rates, with 'wholesale' meaning the price that
operators pay each other for the connectivity. Further on, if within 6
months the price reductions are not passed on to the customers, then a
price cap on retail rates should come to force. Here, ERG proposes that
an EU-wide price cap should be implemented, and that also every
individual national regulator should have the right to enforce a lower
price cap than the European one.
Although this seems like a
lengthy process, the EC intends to present a set of finalised proposals
to the European Parliament before the beginning of Summer, which has
the final say. So, although it won't be so soon, it seems like within a
year or so, we may start getting a fair deal when roaming.
External links:
ERG Press Release - 11 May 2006
EC Second Phase Consultation - 3 April 2006
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 12 May 2006 ) |
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