The European Parliament today passed a law to end mobile 'roaming' fees by 2017.
The law was approved as part of a larger package that sought to strengthen 'net neutrality' protection across the European Union, but which failed to close major loopholes that could be used to create internet ‘fast lanes.’
The ban on roaming charges has enjoyed support within the European Parliament, and was expected to become law.
Under the measure, it will be illegal for telecoms to charge roaming fees for calls, text messages and data as of June 15th, 2017.
Consumers instead will pay the same rates as in their home countries. From April 30th, 2016, roaming charges will be capped at €0.05 per minute for outgoing calls, €0.02 for texts, and €0.05 for every megabyte of data.
The passing of the new law generated a storm of criticism from operators and could lead to higher prices in the domestic market.
Currently, the maximum roaming charges, excluding VAT, are set at €0.19 per minute for outgoing calls, €0.05/minute for incoming calls, €0.06 per SMS sent and €0.20 per megabyte of internet data.
These price cuts are part of Telecommunications Single Market which also includes Internet neutrality rules (‘net neutrality’) whereby operators must treat all traffic equally when making Internet services available.
"The measures adopted today will be completed by an ambitious overhaul of the EU rules on telecommunications in 2016," according to a statement issued by the European Commission.
Many operators warned that the new roaming rules will benefit northern European countries and the southern countries such as Portugal, which gets more tourists than the north, could suffer constraints on the network unless home operators make new investment in capacity.
Fátima Barros, the president of Anacom, today warned that the cost of the increased use of networks in the domestic market by foreign customers will end up being passed on to the domestic customer, which was hardly the intention.
