EU governments agree to cut roaming fees
6880
EU governments agreed to cut the cost of using mobile phones abroad Thursday, paving the way for a cap on roaming fees later this summer.
124778
EU transport ministers agree to deploy the multi-billion-euro Galileo satellite navigation system for operations starting from 2008.
404955
The European Commission ended its&#160;antitrust investigation into Apple&#160;after the company agreed to reduce the price of music downloads from its iTunes Web site in the U.K., the European Union&#39;s antitrust regulator said Wednesday.Apple said that within six months it will lower the prices it charges for music on its U.K. iTunes Store to match its&#160;already standardized pricing across Europe&#160;in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and SpainUntil now iTunes has been more expensive in the U.K., where the currency remains the British pound, than in the countries that have adopted the euro, as well as compared to Denmark and Sweden which tie their currencies closely to the euro, and also more expensive than in Switzerland, which isn&#39;t even in the European Union.The European Commission welcomed Apple&#39;s plan to equalize prices for downloads of songs from the store in Europe.&quot;The Commission is very much in favor of solutions which allow consumers to benefit from a truly Single Market for music downloads,&quot; competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.For Apple, &quot;This is an important step towards a pan-European marketplace for music,&quot; said Steve Jobs, the company&#39;s &#39;s CEO. &quot;We hope every major record label will take a pan-European view of pricing.&quot;Apple blames the record labels for charging more to distribute their music in the U.K. than in other countries in Europe, and threatened to drop any record label from the iTunes portal if they didn&#39;t cut their U.K. prices.&quot;Apple will reconsider its continuing relationship in the U.K. with any record label that does not lower its wholesale prices in the U.K. to the pan-European level within six months,&quot; the company warned.
562004
UK lobbies for cellcos Roaming charges are set to plummet after European ministers supported plans to cap the fees, but some countries are supporting watered down proposals.â¦
463864
Business & money: Â·  EC looks at forcing down price of mobile roaming Â·   Worries over high costs  for business
767016
The European Union reached an agreement with the United States Friday on the sharing of data on trans-Atlantic air passengers which Washington says is needed to help fight terrorism, diplomats said.
394143
Jens F. Laurson and George A. Pieler explain why cell phone roaming charges in Europe remain stuck in the stratosphere.
481105
Operators slash costs ahead of EU legislation Minister for Communications Noel Dempsey has praised Irish mobile operators for introducing new tariffs designed at reducing roaming costs in Ireland and the UK.â¦
292399
CALLS for an all-Ireland mobile phone tariff were made yesterday after plans to slash cross-border roaming charges by up to 70 per cent were backed by EU ministers.   Millions of mobile phone users across 27 member states will benefit from the new rules adopted by the EU Telecoms Council.
747411
European Union ministers adopted on  Thursday rules that will slash the price of making cell phone  calls abroad in the 27-member bloc, after a year of wrangling  and heated debate, the EU's German presidency said.
190979
Tries to cut down price hurdles Ofcom's chief executive Ed Richards will tell a meeting of European regulators today there is a need to make sharp reductions to the costs of "text roaming" and "data roaming" across Europe.â¦
48098
The European Union&#39;s 27 governments gave the final OK Thursday to a law that will slash the cost of using a mobile phone abroad by around 70 percent, the German government said.
206475
Operators say operators should set prices Mobile World Congress EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding has warned mobile executives in Barcelona today that she will impose caps on roaming charges for data and text messaging if they do not cut prices by 1 July.â¦
381870
including BT, Maxis, NTT, T-Mobile, Telstra and StarHub -- announced this week a series of roaming agreements in which crossing
284590
Leading mobile phone operators in the European Union could save billions of euros on third-generation network access under a proposal to be launched next month by Brussels.
22253
(InfoWorld) - While mobile operators claim to be cutting the cost of roaming, their efforts are just a smoke screen and have no appreciable effect on charges overall, a European consumer rights group has said. The lower tariffs are typically available for a limited duration, sometimes requiring payment of an additional subscription fee, and may only be cheaper for long calls made using certain networks, BEUC, the European Consumers' Organisation, said on Tuesday. The fees should be capped at â¬0.33 ($0.43) per minute for customers roaming outside their home country, consumer groups said . Their demand is considerably lower than the cap of â¬0.49 per minuteÂ proposed by the European CommissionÂ in draft legislation that could be voted by June. Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media,Â announced plans last FebruaryÂ to crack down on mobile phone roaming charges, which she said were unreasonably high. On July 12, the Commission proposed cutting by 70 percent the cost of making and receiving calls while travelling in another European Union member state, saving European consumers â¬5 billion a year, according to the Commission's figures. Under the Commission's proposal, operators will be allowed to charge no more than â¬0.16 per minute for calls received while travelling abroad, â¬0.33 per minute for calls made within the country being visited, or â¬0.49 per minute for calls made back home or to a third country while abroad. However, that's still too much for the consumer groups, which called for charges of â¬0.16, â¬0.25 and 0.33 per minute, respectively. The French Consumers' Union (UFC - Que Choisir) called for national telecommunications regulators to collect more information about the volume of incoming, outgoing and local roaming calls, and the wholesale prices charged by operators for each type of call. Without such statistics, it's difficult to measure the effects of tariffs and policies, the group said. Regulators and consumers are dependent on figures provided by the GSM Association, which represents 700 mobile phone operators, the French group said. Those figures showed that the cost of making roaming calls in Europe fell by 25 percent in 2006, from â¬0.83 per minute to â¬0.62, the GSM Association said on Feb. 8. The price decline shows that regulation, especially of the retail market, is unnecessary, the Association said. In the absence of independent measurements of the market, BEUC and UFC - Que Choisir commissioned their own economic analysis in order to determine what they consider fair price caps. Limiting charges to â¬0.33 per minute will stimulate demand, and so have no adverse effect on operators' revenue or profit, they said. Based on mobile phone bills supplied by Members of the European Parliament, they calculated that lower charges could save MEPs an average over â¬1,000 each per year. European telecommunications ministers are expected to discuss the Commission's proposed regulations at informal meetings alongside the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, next month, while the European Parliament will vote on the proposals in April. Germany, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, has announced its intention to push the legislation on roaming prices through by the end of June, when its term of office ends. Â
416725
Five EU countries sign a deal to link their power grids and make it easier to trade electricity across their borders.