EU formally adopts caps on cross-border mobile roaming rates
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The European Union on Monday formally adopted rules slashing the cost of cross border mobile phone calls in the 27-nation bloc, paving the way for their application in the coming months.
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EU governments yesterday agreed to cut the cost of using mobile phones abroad, the last hurdle for a cap on roaming fees to be introduced later this summer.
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Wi-Fi hotspot owners BT Openzone, Singapore&#39;s StarHub, Malaysia&#39;s maxis, Japan&#39;s NTT Com, T-Mobile, Australia&#39;s Telstra and Telecom Italia have entered into a broad roaming agreement to allow each company&#39;s customers to access the others&#39; networks.
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Cheap holiday calls - if you holiday in October EU member states have approved the introduction of the Euro tariff for mobile roaming.â¦
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TechWeb - The legislation could actually lead EU carriers to charge North American travelers higher roaming tolls to make up for lost revenue.
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Mastercard must drop fees it charges for cross-border transactions or face daily fines of 3.5 percent of daily global turnover, European Union regulators said Tuesday.
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The European Commission is harmonizing radio frequency bands across the European Union in order to spur use of a wide range of wireless devices such as wireless computer keyboards, headphones and garage door openers, it said Thursday.
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Tele2  said on Monday it  signed a roaming agreement for access to T-Mobile's mobile  network in Croatia.
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Mobile phone operators must  act before July 1 to avoid the European Union imposing lower  prices for texting or surfing the Web via mobile phones when  abroad, the bloc's top telecoms regulator said on Monday.
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European legislators hope that aÂ compromise agreementÂ to cap mobile phone roaming charges will become law before Europeans take their summer holidays. But a network operators' group warned to expect delays because even if the law takes effect as planned July 1, network operators won't have to offer the new tariffs until September.
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(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
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European business travellers and holidaymakers can look forward to lower rates on mobile phone calls while abroad in the EU once new price caps go into effect across the bloc starting on Saturday.
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T-Mobile has announced that it has joined the Wireless Broadband Alliance&#39;s new Wi-Fi roaming agreement to allow worldwide roaming for mobile users.
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Business & money: Â·  EC looks at forcing down price of mobile roaming Â·   Worries over high costs  for business
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Despite a fierce lobbying campaign by the telecoms industry, the European Commission is poised to force operators to slash the cost of mobile phone calls while abroad, officials say.
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European Union ministers adopted on  Thursday rules that will slash the price of making mobile phone  calls abroad in the 27-member bloc, after a year of wrangling  and heated debate, the EU&#39;s German presidency said.
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EU telecommunications ministers backed on Thursday rules slashing the cost of cross-border mobile phone calls by up to 70 percent, lifting the last political hurdle to their application.