Roaming fees face summer clampdown

The French government has indicated that it will drop its opposition to fixing maximum international roaming charges for mobile phone users at retail level, clearing the way for a deal on cutting fees in June.

French officials indicated that they could accept the capping of charges for making calls home on a foreign network at €0.60 per minute.

The French would also accept caps as low as €0.40 under special offers and €0.35 for a ‘local call’ within the country that a mobile phone user is visiting.

This would represent a shift from France’s earlier opposition and its support for a UK proposal for ‘sunrise clauses’ which would give operators a further chance to cut roaming charges before facing legislation.

An EU official said that with the French move there was a "clear majority in the Council of Ministers for the general architecture" of the European Commission’s proposed regulation which envisages retail price caps.

Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for the information society and media, proposed last July capping roaming charges at €0.49 per minute for international calls on a foreign network, €0.33 for local calls on a foreign network and €0.165 for calls received while abroad.

Most member states support retail price caps although they disagree over the level. The German presidency of the EU has proposed €0.50 per minute for international and local calls and €0.25 for receiving calls. A majority of member states back the idea of two caps as opposed to the three the Commission has suggested. Some countries are proposing setting a higher maximum tariff provided that consumers have the possibility to opt for cheaper packages which many operators are offering.

EU officials are increasingly confident that a deal on regulating roaming charges can be struck with the European Parliament at first reading in June, paving the way for the price caps to come into force in July in time for the holiday season when most consumers are hit with roaming charges while using their mobile phones abroad. Both MEPs who are drafting reports on the Parliament’s position, Austrian centre-right MEP Paul Rübig and Maltese Socialist Joseph Muscat, have pledged to work for an agreement to be signed off by the plenary in April or May. This would clear the way for a deal with the Council in June.

On Tuesday (20 February), BEUC, the European consumers’ association warned that the deal shaping up between the Council and MEPs could still mean mobile users paying excessive roaming charges.

Jim Murray, BEUC director, said that roaming charges should be no higher than €0.33 per minute for international calls, €0.25 for local calls and €0.16 to receive calls abroad. Instead, he said, operators were charging five or six times the actual cost of calls and of connecting to international networks. In some cases users are paying more than €1 a minute to use their mobiles abroad.

Announcing a study into the roaming market commissioned by French consumer organisation UFC-Que Choisir, Alain Bazot, the group’s president, said that the proposal was at risk of "institutionalising excessive prices". He also ridiculed the notion of charging users more on the basis of nationality. "No one would think of charging a German more to use a French motorway simply because he is German," Bazot said.

Murray said there was no evidence that roaming charges had fallen in recent years, disputing operators’ claims that that prices have been coming down without legislation. He said there had been a proliferation of special offers but they were available only to a limited number of users for limited periods and under strict conditions of eligibility.

He dismissed claims that price caps would hit operators’ profitability, saying that lower charges would increase incentives for people to use their mobiles more abroad.

The French government has indicated that it will drop its opposition to fixing maximum international roaming charges for mobile phone users at retail level, clearing the way for a deal on cutting fees in June.