European Commission to slash European roaming rates.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.



The European Commission (EU) is set to outline new plans in the coming weeks to bring European roaming rates in line with national tariffs, EU sources told Reuters.


 Under the new proposals, sources said the cap on the cost of roaming voice calls in the EU would be lowered to EUR0.24 per minute from July 2014, a reduction of nearly 40 percent from the current cap of EUR0.39. From July 2016, higher roaming costs would effectively be abolished for voice calls altogether, the sources claim.


Text messages will reportedly be capped at EUR0.10 per SMS until July 2016, compared with the current ceiling of EUR0.11.


A further cap will also be introduced on retail data roaming, which sources say may force operators to set a limit on the cost of downloading data from a device while abroad. Last year, legislation was introduced to limit data roaming bills to EUR50 per month (unless a customer requests a higher or lower limit) to stop instances of “bill shock” caused by consuming large amounts of mobile data while abroad.


The data roaming cap is expected to be initially set at EUR0.90 per megabyte, compared to a current average charge of around EUR2.50.

According to Reuters, sources “in the mobile industry” described the new proposals as significant, with one saying EU telecoms commissioner Neelie Kroes (pictured) was "not being mild" with the industry.

 A crackdown on roaming rates could have serious ramifications for major pan-European mobile operators such as Vodafone, Telefonica/O2, Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile and France Telecom/Orange. The EU draft proposal is expected to be signed-off by regulators next month, though it could be challenged by operators.