De Raad keurt nieuwe regels over roaming goed (en)
The Council adopted 1 a regulation amending regulation (EC) No 717/2007 2 on roaming on public mobile telephone networks within the Community ( 3645/09 , 10319/1/09 ADD1 ). The Council and the European Parliament reached agreement on this file at first reading.
The proposal provides for an extension of the regulation currently in force which is due to expire in 2010, a further reduction in charges and an extension of pricing limits to cover SMS and data services in addition to voice calls.
The new rules will ensure that the price paid by users of mobile communication networks for community-wide roaming services, i.e. when travelling within the EU, is not unjustifiably higher than the price paid for making or receiving a call, sending and receiving an SMS message and transferring data in their country of origin. It also aims to ensure that users have the information needed to understand and control their roaming expenditure.
The new regulation further reduces the cost of mobile roaming calls. Currently at EUR 0.46 for calls made and EUR 0.22 for calls received abroad, the caps will go down to EUR 0.43 for calls made and EUR 0.19 for calls received abroad on 1 July 2009, to EUR 0.39 and EUR 0.15 on 1 July 2010 and to EUR 0.35 and EUR 0.11 by 1 July 2011 (excluding VAT).
The new roaming rules introduce an SMS price caps for sending a text messages while abroad at EUR 0.11 for retail (excluding VAT). It also reduces data roaming charges by introducing a wholesale cap of EUR 1 per megabyte download as from 1 July 2009, which will fall to EUR 0.80 in 2010 and to EUR 0.50 in 2011. In addition, the principle of per-second billing is introduced after first 30 seconds for calls made and from the first second for calls received while abroad.
Lastly, in order to avoid bill shocks for consumers, the regulation lays down new measures to improve the transparency of retail prices for data roaming services, and to provide roaming customers with the tools they need to monitor and control their expenditure on these services.
The new regulation will enter into force one day following its publication in the Official Journal of the EU, that means at the beginning of July 2009. The measure will be time-limited, expiring on 30 June 2012.
The Commission will review the functioning of this regulation by 30 June 2011.
The Latvian and Spanish delegations abstained from voting.
OJ L 171, 29.6.2007, p. 32.