European legislators aim to cap roaming fees by summer
- Posted by admin on May 23rd, 2007 filed in Technology news
(InfoWorld) - European legislators hope that a compromise agreement to cap mobile phone roaming charges will become law before Europeans take their summer holidays. But a network operators’ group warned to expect delays because even if the law takes effect as planned July 1, network operators won’t have to offer the new tariffs until September.
Under the proposed law, “Roaming on public mobile networks,” European Union mobile subscribers traveling in another E.U. member state will pay no more than €0.49 ($0.66) per minute, excluding taxes, to call home or another European country, unless they opt out of the new tariff. The price will be further limited to €0.43 in 2009, while the cost of calls received while traveling will be capped at €0.24 per minute this year, and €0.19 in 2009. In addition, network operators will see the wholesale prices that they charge one another for carrying roaming traffic capped at €0.30 per minute this year and €0.26 by 2009.
Network operators slammed the law as bad for competition, and for consumers in the long term. The average cost of roaming calls has fallen from €0.83 per minute before taxes in 2005 to €0.59 in the first quarter of this year, thanks to “innovative” tariff plans, mostly based on volume discounts, according to the GSM Association, whose members are operators.
One operator, Vodafone Group, said customers opting for its Passport international tariff already pay less on average than the price caps proposed by the European Parliament. However, only talkative customers see the benefits: Each call they make is subject to a “connection fee” of
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