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European Regulators Report on Roaming Tariff Reductions
The European Regulators Group (ERG) has published the results of its first report on charges for international roaming when EU consumers use their mobile phone abroad. The data relates to the period April to September 2007 and therefore mostly relates to the period before the EU Regulation on international roaming came into effect.
The main effects of this regulation will not be clear until the results of the next data collection (covering the period up to March 2008) are available. However early effects are already evident. Many roaming charges show a clear reduction between the April to June period and the July to September period. For example, between these two periods;
- The retail charge across Europe for voice roaming calls made reduced from an average of €0.69 to €0.62 per minute billed
- The corresponding average retail charge for voice roaming calls received reduced from €0.34 to €0.30 per minute billed
The ERG says that it plans to repeat the data collection at 6 month intervals so that the evolution of charges can be measured and that data submitted as the evidence base for the CommissionÃ's review of the Roaming Regulation at the end of this year.
The data collection has been extensive and deals with voice, SMS and data roaming offered to customers of more than 150 of European network operators and service providers, across countries both within and outside the European Economic Area.
Separately national regulatory authorities have confirmed good compliance with the transparency obligations of the Regulation, for example in relation to tariff options available to consumers and real-time access to personalised tariff information.
The full report (pdf file, 20 pages) can be downloaded from the ERG's website.
Posted to the site on 17th January 2008