EU accord would see end of mobile roaming fees in mid-2017
By Bloomberg
Telecommunications companies in the European Union would be banned from charging premiums for roaming services starting in June 2017 following an overhaul of rules for the sector next year, under a compromise reached Tuesday.
When traveling in the EU, mobile-phone users will pay the same price as at home, with no extra charges, according to the agreement on proposed legislation reached by negotiators from the European Parliament, the EU governments and the European Commission, the Brussels-based commission said in a statement on Tuesday. The agreement needs formal approval by the Parliament and the bloc’s 28 governments.
The accord is a “crucial agreement to finally end roaming charges,” Guenther Oettinger, the EU’s commissioner for the Digital Economy, said according to the statement.
Phone companies have argued the plan to eliminate roaming charges would deprive them of profitable businesses in a market already overcrowded with with more than 100 carriers, intense price wars and weak economies in several European countries.
“Roaming charges currently teach users to switch off their mobile phone when abroad,” the commission said. “If they are not afraid of their bills anymore, they will use their devices more regularly when they are traveling,” creating more opportunities for businesses to provide services to consumers across the region, it said.
In addition, the EU agreed to enshrine the principle of so- called net neutrality into law, banning the blocking and slowing of Internet content, the commission said.
Vodafone Group Plc shares were down 0.3 percent at 9:02 a.m. London time, while Orange SA was down 0.6 percent, Telefonica SA down 0.7 percent and Deutsch Telekom AG little changed.
Telekom Austria AG, the European phone company majority- owned by Carlos Slim’s America Movil SAB, was down 1.3 percent. The company’s roaming income has fallen amid regulatory pressures.
A European Union move on roaming fees may reduce mobile operators’ cash flow by as much as 7 billion euros ($7.8 billion) by 2020, Etno, a European telecommunications industry body, said in 2013.