EU to unveil plans next week to further lower roaming call charges

Jun 30, 2011, 11:52 GMT

Brussels - The European Union's executive said Thursday it would present proposals next week to boost competition between telecom operators in order to lower the cost of using a mobile phone across the bloc.

The plans, due out on Wednesday, were announced ahead of a July 1 date that will see so-called roaming charges fall again as a result of EU regulation adopted in 2007.

'The new legislation will aim at tackling the underlying problem in the roaming market which is the lack of competition,' Jonathan Todd, spokesman for EU digital affairs commissioner Neelie Kroes, told reporters in Brussels.

'At the moment the operators in this market do not offer prices below the regulated price caps ... so in effect the price caps have become a form of price floors,' he added.

From Friday, the maximum cost of calls made in a EU country different from the one where the phone is registered will fall from 39 to 35 euro cents (50 dollar cents) per minute, excluding value-added tax.

The price cap for receiving calls is set to drop from 15 to 11 euro cents per minute, while the price limit for each megabyte of internet data downloaded or uploaded from abroad is to fall from 80 to 50 euro cents.

Next week's legislation is aimed at pushing prices further down, implementing the objective to get the difference between national and EU-wide calling and internet surfing to 'approach zero by 2015,' Todd said.