Europe caps roaming cell pricing
In a move sure to rankle European cell phone providers, telecommunication ministers in Europe, acting for the European Commission, placed price caps on roaming Short Message Service (SMS) messages, commonly known as text messages. The price cut was substantial, reducing retail text message prices from an average of 0.29 Euros to 0.11 Euros. The wholesale rate has been capped at 0.04 Euros.
A cap was also placed on prices charged for roaming Internet browsing, at a maximum of 1 Euro per megabyte, and also includes cuts in prices for voice calls while roaming. According to PC World, the price reduction was proposed in September and approved yesterday. Viviane Reding, the telecommunications commissioner, said “Ministers have answered the Commission’s call for a speedy response to the SMS and data roaming rip-off very positively.”
The price of sending a text message while out of your home country in Europe had been as high as ten times the user’s home rate. Given the 2.5 billion text messages sent per year in Europe, text messaging is an 800 million Euro revenue center for European cell operators. Bringing these prices under control is seen as an important action to illustrate the unity of the single telecommunications market that exists under the European Commission.
Relative to this matter, commissioner Reding said, “I am confident that with Parliament we will ensure that consumers traveling in the E.U. will save money when sending texts and surfing the Web with a mobile phone as of 1 July 2009. This would send a clear message of consensus that the E.U.’s single market is there to serve European citizens as well as businesses.”
These regulatory actions are partially aimed at reducing the number of surprises that European consumers get in their cell phone bills. To further reduce confusion, the legislation requires that consumers receive an automatic (and free) SMS message whenever they enter a country where roaming charges will apply. The message must contain the rates that will apply. This is the sort of transparency that should be applied to cell phone charges worldwide.
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November 29th, 2008
How come they don’t offer free roaming like they do in the United States? Surely the E.U. is much smaller than the U.S.
November 29th, 2008
That’s a good question, Ralph. The EU is pretty good sized, but it is possible the protective nature of the former separate countries changed the level of competition which has led to widespread free roaming in the U.S.