The European Commission (EC) has released its first assessment of the application of the Regulation on Roaming on public mobile telephone networks, which aimed to bring about a reduction of up to 70 per cent in the cost of mobile telephone calls. The EC has found that the majority of mobile operators have complied with the Regulation by offering customers the new “Eurotariff” with prices (excluding VAT) capped at 0.49 euros per minute for calls made while abroad and at 0.24 euros per minute for calls received.
The results of the survey, published on 2 August, can be seen on the EC’s website on roaming which benchmarks how mobile operators in all 27 Member States have applied the new EU rule.
In its assessment the EC highlights the fact that many operators applied the “Eurotariff” straight away on 01 July or in the first few weeks of July, allowing consumers to benefit from the considerably lower prices. Furthermore the great majority did so automatically, so speeding up the process. The cheapest “Eurotariff” found by the Commission was 31.5 cents per minute for calls made and at 12.6 cents per minute for calls received while abroad. Meanwhile several operators are offering special packages of interest to certain groups of consumers who are frequent users of roaming.
Of the total of 95 operators surveyed, 74 responded to the EC inquiry.
In October the Commission will carry out a more detailed analysis of the situation in cooperation with the European Regulators Group (ERG); this will be taken into consideration in the assessment of the Regulation that the Commission has to present to the European Parliament and the EU’s Council of Ministers within 18 months of the Regulation’s entry into force (30 June 2007).
Further information:
- Eurotariff rates: overview http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/implementation/benchmark/index_en.htm
- EC Press Release: ''Roaming in the EU after the 30 July deadline'' http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/1202&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
Related information on ANACOM's website:
- Roaming https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?categoryId=188342
