European parliament lower roaming charges

European lawmakers on Thursday approved a plan to extend and lower the Continent’s limits on mobile phone roaming charges paid by consumers for another five years, and added the first controls on mobile Internet use. In addition to the caps, the legislation adopted by the European Parliament will allow E.U. residents to buy roaming services from a carrier besides their regular operator beginning in 2014, an attempt to create competition in the market that will lower prices and supplant the need for price controls. The Parliament voted 578 to 10, with 10 abstentions, for the politically popular measure. The European Council of Ministers, which acts as the legislative upper house, has already agreed to adopt the same proposal at its next meeting in June. The new lower price caps will take effect on July 1. Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for telecommunications, said the reductions in retail price caps, especially the limit on data roaming, could save some European families €300, or $390, during a one-week summer vacation outside their home countries. Business travelers in Europe will save on average about €1,000 a year in roaming charges, Mrs. Kroes said. Europe’s retail price controls on mobile phone roaming charges, which consumers pay when making or receiving calls, texting and surfing the Internet outside their home countries, were introduced in July 2007 and have been lowered each year since. Support for the limits remains strong. A European Commission survey found that 74 percent of E.U. residents still turn off their smartphones while traveling to avoid the charges. Monique Goyens, the director general of the European Consumers’ Organization, said the new retail caps on data roaming were welcome, but not low enough to encourage widespread use. The new consumer cap on mobile Internet roaming of 70 euro cents a megabyte that will take effect July 1 will fall to 45 cents a year later and to 20 cents on July 1, 2014. Ms. Goyens said the data roaming cap was still much too high. “Given the proliferation of smartphones and, more notably, the actual cost of data provision for operators, this is still too high,” Ms. Goyens said. Lawmakers agreed to significant new reductions in the caps for making and receiving phone calls and texting while traveling across national borders. The roaming cap for making a voice call will fall to 29 cents a minute on July 1 from 35 cents now, and to 19 cents a minute by July 1, 2014. The cap for receiving a voice call while roaming will fall to 8 cents per minute in July from 11 cents now, and to 5 cents by July 2014. The roaming cap for sending a text message will fall to 9 cents in July from 11 cents now and to 6 cents by 2014. Starting in July, Europe-based mobile phone operators will be required to send their customers a text message, warning them that their total monthly roaming charges are about to exceed €50. The requirement applies to roaming charges incurred outside the European Union, which had previously been excluded from the warning system. Bengt Beier, founder of the group Fair Roaming, based in Salzburg, hailed the passage as a victory for consumers. “Prices for roaming will be lowered by more than half,” he said. “Consumers will have a choice of operators when going abroad. The protection of users will be improved.” But, he added, “we call on the E.U. to keep up its work and bring down the prices for all international and roaming calls.”