Europe paves way to abolish roaming mobile fees
Print Edition
EUROPEAN lawmakers clinched a deal early yesterday to cap the wholesale charges mobile service operators pay each other to enable their customers to use their mobile phones in other European countries, paving the way for the abolition of roaming fees in June.
The caps on wholesale roaming charges were the last piece of the puzzle needed for the abolition of retail roaming charges on June 15, 2017, to ensure companies can afford to continue offering roaming within the EU once they can no longer charge retail customers for the service.
Under yesterday’s agreement between lawmakers and the Council of EU member states, wholesale charges for data — which were the most controversial given the exponential use of mobile Internet — will be capped at 7.7 euros (US$8.31) per gigabyte from June 2017, going down to 2.5 euros per gigabyte in 2022.
Caps for making calls will decrease from 5 euro cents per minute to 3.2 euro cents per minute, while those for sending text messages will halve to 1 euro cent from 2 euro cents as of June, said the Council.
The European Commission — the EU executive — will review the wholesale caps every two years and, if necessary, propose new ones.
Yesterday’s deal still needs to be confirmed by the full European Parliament and all member states. The decade-long battle against roaming charges took on an added significance after Britain voted to quit the bloc last year in a surge of anti-EU sentiment, making Brussels keen to demonstrate the benefits of membership to ordinary citizens.
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