EU to tackle mobile 'roaming' charges

Brussels is to draw up proposals on cutting the cost of international mobile telephone ‘roaming’, Viviane Reding said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the meeting of European telecom regulators in Paris, the media commissioner said that she had asked her department “to start working on an EU regulation”.

The proposal could be presented to the European parliament before the summer break, and could come into force as early as the second half of 2007, she added.

The proposal would not set “ideal” roaming prices for international calls, but would require “that international roaming charges are not higher than national roaming charges.”.

“Roaming charges are paid for using the network of another operator, and should not be higher just because that other operator is in another EU member state,” Reding said.

The Luxembourg commissioner said the regulation could also include obliging companies to make their roaming charges easier to understand or for developing a cross-border mobile market.

Roaming charges vary wildly within the EU – from €0.20 a minute at the lowest end to more than €13 at the highest, and Reding told operators in October last year that she would not be afraid to regulate if prices did not come down.

She said that while telecom operators had acted to cut the cost to other telecom companies of using their networks, they had failed to pass these savings on to consumers.

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