EU Pressures Carriers to Lower Data Roaming Rates
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An EU commissioner hints of regulatory action if cooperative international roaming doesn't extend from voice to data.
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BARCELONA, Spain  - 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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Europe has been slow to adopt 3G mobile-phone services, and now the opportunity for cashing in may have passed. A new Wi-Fi design from a British company threatens to cut away the ground 3G has gained. By Wendy Grossman.
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Investor's Business Daily - Investors in European telecom stocks have worried about rumors the EU soon would cap roaming charges on cell phone calls, hurting profits. That is until new rumors surfaced about possible mergers.
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Jens F. Laurson and George A. Pieler explain why cell phone roaming charges in Europe remain stuck in the stratosphere.
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Mobile phone operators face a new attack on their revenue in Europe after the UK telecoms regulator expressed concern about "extremely high" prices paid by consumers and business people for web surfing on their mobiles while abroad.
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It's crunch time for Europe's mobile telephone giants. After spending billions of euros on third-generation licences, they now hope to persuade millions of customers to make the switch to the new 3G services with high-speed Internet access and video and music downloads.
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LUXEMBOURG -- 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.
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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's German presidency said.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Union'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. By the end of this month mobile phone operators will have to offer subscribers a capped rate for phoning or receiving calls while outside their own countries. In the first year, roaming tariffs will be capped at â¬0.49 ($0.66) a minute for making calls abroad and â¬0.24 for receiving them. It will fall to â¬0.46 and â¬0.22 in the second year and â¬0.43 and â¬0.19 in the third, respectively. A rear-guard action by the U.K. in defense of mobile phone operators petered out and British Industry Minister Margaret Hodge was convinced to support theÂ compromise packageÂ put forward by the European Parliament. Mobile phone operators haveÂ lobbied hard to avert the law, which they see as unnecessary and harmful to competition. German Economy Minister Michael Glos was chairing the meeting because Germany currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU. He will announce the agreement reached Thursday morning at a press conference at 3 p.m. CET (1 p.m. GMT). Â
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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.
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Passengers could soon be using their mobile phones on planes flying through European airspace.
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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¦
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(InfoWorld) - The European Union's 27 national telecom authorities must submit plans to regulate the single European market by Feb. 16Â or face ceding those powers to the European Commission, Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding has warned. The Commission wants the national regulators to join forces to form an E.U.-wide independent body akin to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. It gave them until mid February to submit plans so that it could draft legislation by July. "A European Union-wide regulator would be a temporary body. It would be disbanded once the transition to a single competitive telecoms market is over," said Martin Selmayr, Reding's spokesman, on Monday. Several of the national regulatory bodies have failed to prove they are independent from their governments and incumbent monopoly phone companies. Currently, the national regulators enforce Europe-wide telecom rules in their own countries. However, they take different positions in interpreting the same rules. The U.K., for example, has cracked down on former monopoly provider BT Group, while Commission officials complain that Germany has allowed Deutsche TelekomÂ to keep a grip on the fixed-line local loop and even receive permission to build a high-speed Internet network without sharing access with competitors. Some countries are creating their own telecom laws without consulting their E.U. neighbors. The German regulator, for example, has failed to stop the German government from proposing a law that would grant the former monopoly Deutsche Telekom protection from competition. Other countries have failed to transpose European telecom rules into their national statute books. In a letter to all national regulators sent at the end of last year, Reding warned that failure to submit a workable proposal for an FCC-type organization by Feb. 16 would leave her no choice but to propose greater authority for the Commission. Reding is conducting a review of all the laws agreed in the late 1990s designed to forge a single European telecom market out of all the national ones, with open competition throughout the E.U.
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EU telecoms ministers back rules that cut the charges for using mobile phones abroad.
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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.
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Just buy a license, and do what you will The EU has released a policy document calling for frequencies to be allocated with no restriction put on what they can be used for.â¦