European mobile charge reduction vote succeeds

A committee of the European Parliament has voted on the future of mobile roaming charges within the EU

In a landmark vote today [12-April], the European Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) committee approved the European Commission's proposal to reduce international wholesale mobile roaming charges by 70 percent. However, users will have to wait until mid-May, when the plenary votes on the proposal, before the European Parliament’s final view is known.

The ITRE committee vote has set a cap of €0.40 per minute on calls made abroad and a cap of €0.15 for receiving them. This is contrary to an earlier vote by the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, which called for €0.50 and €0.25 per minute caps respectively.

A spokesperson for the GSMA, a global trade association representing more than 700 GSM mobile phone operators, said, "We're very disappointed with this, it'll be very damaging for the mobile industry and there could be knock-on effects with other services. It'll be difficult to tell how individual mobile operators will react if the plenary vote approves the charge reduction. As for legal challenges to the decision, I couldn't comment for individual mobile operators."

AwayPhone’s chief executive officer, Sherry Madera, said that while this would be good for consumers, it is too soon to say whether it would have a great effect. “The devil will be in the detail,” she said. “Quite a lot of mobile operators’ profits come from roaming charges, and UK and French mobile operators have been lobbying vociferously against [commissioner for information society and media] Viviane Reding’s plans.”

Before the vote, Viviane Reding warned the committee that lowering roaming charges only for new customers would be no good because “mobile phone penetration in the EU is now at 103 percent, practically all EU citizens already have a mobile phone contract”. She added: “It is of crucial importance to ensure that all consumers in the EU will be able to benefit from lower roaming charges, and that no one is left behind.” The European Commission says that the mobile operators profit to the tune of nearly £6bn a year from these transactions.