EU set to axe mobile phone roaming charges
The European Commission is poised to make an announcement next week which could force mobile operators to charge the same fee for national and international calls.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern raised the issue at the summit of EU leaders in Brussels yesterday after operators in Britain and Ireland eliminated their charges following Government pressure.
Irish consumers reportedly pay among the highest charges for using their mobile phones when travelling throughout Europe.
A survey, to be released on Tuesday, will compare the cost of more than 5,000 different calls from various operators in all 25 EU member states during March.
Martin Selmayr, spokesman for Information and Media Commissioner Viviane Redding, said: “The survey will show the prices have not come down and, in some instances, they have even increased since our last survey in October.”
Ms Redding had warned six months ago that if operators did not reduce their roaming charges, she would take action.
The commission is now drafting a regulation which it plans to put to the European Parliament and the member states in June.
In the event of it being adopted, possibly in the second part of 2007, the proposed regulation will have immediate effect in all 25 member states.
The regulation will not prescribe a specific ideal price for international roaming, but would require that international roaming charges are not higher than national roaming charges, the commission said.
As a result, mobile phone charges would be similar to fixed-line calls in having one charge for local and one for international, irrespective of where the mobile phone customer’s home provider is based.
“Roaming charges are paid for using the network of another operator, and thus should not be higher in an internal market just because the other network is placed in another EU member state,” Ms Redding has said.
She has received support throughout Europe, including from Communications Minister Noel Dempsey.
Mr Selmayr said: “She is very pleased with the support from Ireland and we believe it was no coincidence that on the day she was threatening to take action one of the Irish operators announced they were completely abolishing roaming rates.”
Mr Ahern said eliminating roaming charges was one way to show how relevant the EU was to citizens, and especially young people.
“Roaming charges are not necessary and are excessively costly and we would like to see them eliminated,” he said.
The last survey of roaming prices found the lowest price was 20 cents for a four-minute peak-time call made on a Finnish mobile contract while roaming in Sweden.
The highest was €13.08 charged to a Maltese consumer roaming for four minutes in Latvia.
