MEPs to discuss how to bring down roaming costs

Industry and consumer groups to suggest how to regulate excessive charges levied on mobile phone use.

The European Parliament’s industry, research and energy committee will next week hear suggestions from industry and consumer groups on how to regulate excessive charges levied on mobile phone use outside a user’s home country.

The committee is holding a hearing on 20 December on the European Commission’s proposal to revise the regulation on mobile communication roaming charges.

The Commission wants to bring roaming charges down by introducing more competition into the market and gradually lowering price caps.

Angelika Niebler, a centre-right German MEP who is drafting the Parliament’s opinion on the proposal, will be the main speaker at the hearing. Other speakers include representatives of Telefónica and KPN group and a representative of BEUC, the European consumers’ organisation.

MEPs are currently debating Niebler’s draft report and are expected to vote on it in February.

Increased competition

Niebler told European Voice she supported the Commission’s approach to lowering roaming charges, which includes structural measures to increase competition in the market for roaming services. She said she backed the principle of open access so that operators can enter the market and the principle of unbundling so that roaming services can be offered a separate package. “We have to get more competition into the market,” she said.

An early draft of Niebler’s report has drawn criticism from some industry experts who claim that her suggestions would make it harder to bring more competition into the roaming market. Innocenzo Genna, who works for large fixed-line operators that want to enter the mobile market, said that Niebler’s proposed changes would stop companies setting up as mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) to offer roaming-only packages to consumers.

Genna said that if Niebler’s changes on open access were approved, MVNOs would be allowed to operate only if a regulator’s analysis was that the market was dominated by a single company. Then – but only then – it would be possible for a regulator to impose an obligation to allow MVNOs to operate as a remedy for the lack of competition in the market. Genna said that there were three or four operators in each roaming market and therefore no single company had a dominant position, which would rule out introducing an MVNO obligation.

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