Finnish travellers to benefit from planned EU end to mobile phone roaming charges

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If the European Commission has its way, Finnish mobile phone subscribers travelling in Spain, for instance, could find themselves paying a much lower telephone bill for their calls while abroad.
      The Commission said on Tuesday that it would put forward legislation against what it sees as excessive roaming fees - charges that are paid on calls using another country's mobile phone network.
      Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, says that she has warned European mobile operators on many occasions to lower their roaming fees.
      The Commission says that the warnings have not been heeded, and in some cases, charges have even been increased. Last autumn, the Commission set up a web site to help consumers compare charges of various operators in different countries.
      The Commission feels that it has the right to take issue with roaming charges, because it is clearly linked with the EU's internal market. The aim is to agree on the regulations by next summer, together with the European Parliament and the member states.
     
Roaming charges vary considerably in the EU, depending on where the caller and the recipient are located, and on what operator is chosen.
      According to the example cited by the Commission, a Finnish mobile subscriber calling home during a holiday in Sweden paid as little as 20 cents for a four-minute call last year, whereas a Maltese subscriber in Latvia has to pay more than EUR 13 for a similar call.
     
The Commission also wants to eliminate charges for receiving calls while abroad. According to a Commission estimate, regulating roaming charges would reduce telephone bills for EU citizens travelling to other member states by 40-60 percent.
      The proposal also includes the principle of "home pricing". This means that a Finnish subscriber making a local call in Spain would pay the same as for an equivalent call in Finland.
     
The proposal has been criticised by European mobile operators, some of whom warn that it could lead to higher prices of calls within the home country.
      However, Jyrki Karasvirta, head of communications at TeliaSonera, does not believe that operators would raise local charges to offset reduced income. He also predicts that the EU will keep close scrutiny on the matter.
      TeliaSonera welcomes the proposal; Finland has considerably less international mobile telephone communications than countries of Central Europe with bigger tourist industries. Karasvirta says that Finnish operators pay EUR 100-150 million more in roaming charges to operators in other countries than they get back.


Links:
  Europe´s Information Society - Thematic Portal: Using my mobile abroad: are prices dropping?

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