| Author (Corporate) | European Commission |
|---|---|
| Series Title | COM |
| Series Details | (2016) 399 final (15.6.16) |
| Publication Date | 15/06/2016 |
| Content Type | Policy-making |
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EU regulatory intervention on wholesale and retail roaming markets has been necessary for the last 10 years in order to improve the conditions for the functioning of the internal market for roaming services within the Union. In 2015, the European Parliament and the Council adopted Regulation (EU) 2015/2120, which entered into force on 29 November 2015 and amended Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 (the Roaming Regulation). Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 requires retail roaming surcharges to be abolished in the Union from 15 June 2017, subject to fair usage of roaming services and the possibility of applying a sustainability derogation mechanism of the abolition of retail roaming charges. These new rules for retail roaming services in the Union are referred to in this explanatory memorandum as the ‘roam-like-at-home’ (RLAH) rules. While necessary, the regulation at retail level alone is not sufficient to implement RLAH. For the abolition of retail roaming surcharges to be sustainable throughout the Union and not to distort competitive conditions in domestic markets, national wholesale roaming markets need to be competitive and deliver wholesale roaming prices that enable operators to sustainably offer retail roaming services without any additional charges. In this regard, the Commission has undertaken a review of the wholesale roaming market, with a view to assessing measures necessary to enable the abolition of retail roaming surcharges. This analysis of wholesale markets shows that a number of market failures still affect the functioning of these markets (such as their oligopolistic character, combined with the bilateral nature of roaming agreements and the lack of wholesale substitutes). This analysis also shows that the negotiating position of the net senders of roaming traffic, including the weaker market players on wholesale roaming markets, may in fact deteriorate under RLAH if countervailing measures are not applied. This could in turn distort the functioning of the home operators’ domestic markets. At the same time, any rules on the wholesale market should ensure that visited operators are able to recover the costs incurred in providing wholesale roaming services, including joint and common costs. This should preserve incentives to invest in visited networks and avoid any distortion in domestic competition in the visited markets caused by regulatory arbitrage by operators using roaming access remedies to compete in otherwise competitive domestic visited markets. This initiative therefore aims to regulate the functioning of national wholesale roaming markets in order to abolish retail roaming surcharges by 15 June 2017 without distorting the domestic visited and home markets. |
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| Source Link | Link to Main Source http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2016:399:FIN |
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| Subject Categories | Business and Industry |
| Countries / Regions | Europe |
