Roaming costs for mobiles to be capped

This afternoon, after years of debate the European Union finally reached a "preliminary" deal to cap the costs of making and receiving calls on your mobile phone when out of your home country in other parts of the EU. Subject to final ratification in the European Parliament on May 23rd and by the EU Telecommunications ministries on June 7th, calls abroad will be limited to €0.49 per minute for outgoing and €0.24 per minute for incoming, falling progressively to €0.43 and €0.19 respectively over the next two years. It'll take 3 months to implement the law, so consumers will miss much of the 2007 summer season when so many are abroad. It's long been an EU goal to reduce roaming costs, but today is the first announcement of actual figures. The new rules have been pushed through the EU in record time, at least in comparison to the many years most European legislature requires.

"Roaming Costs" for use of mobiles abroad have long been considered excessive and controlled by the cartel of international mobile network operators (roaming is said to represent 2% of their costs but 9% of their revenue). The new law will require all customers, irrespective of their current contract to be offered the new prices, and may even spark a new competition war of offers with rates below the accepted limits. As wholesale prices (the inter-operator charges) are forced by law down to €0.26 per minute over the next 2 years there is plenty of room for manoeuvre to bring further reductions to the consumer.

Press Release

While I feel ripped off by the current roaming costs, I don't like the approach taken here. It seems like some cheap point scoring with the populace by the commission. Far better would be for carriers to make their charging structures more transparent. All this move does is shift the costs of keeping a mobile network running onto those people who do not roam.

I think they had been trying to get them to do this voluntarily for years - but gave up and used legistlation.

RT

All of the price reductions, transparency of charges and "take your number with you" were in response to National and EU legislation. The networks do not do anything unless they are forced to! Kick 'em where it hurts I say!

Then they should have passed legislation to achieve that.

I agree roaming charges seem high but if you look at the trend over the last 5 years, they have been coming down. If a particular carrier is high, then switch or use a payphone.

So, you expect them to just take the hit and not reclaim the lost revenue by upping charges on non-roaming users?

Legislation is preventing them from monopolosing their positions. Allowing resellers to come into the market and give competitive alternatives. This has been forced on them, and thus brings the roaming charges down.

They make a disproportionate amount of money from what they put in. This is why it is being regulated. Yes they will try and get it back any way they can. But regulation and competition will prevent this.

Do not feel sorry for them. They will take what they can get. Don't stand too near the cage!

Could you point me at this trend? The whole point is that the alleged cartel has hardly decreased roaming charges to the end customer since the implementation of the ANSI-41 roaming standard when GSM technology first began to appear, with the exception of some recent new contracts inspired by the likelihood of enforced reductions. As an aggressive mobile user myself and frequent international traveller I don't believe my roaming charges have reduced since I first got a GSM phone in 1992. A key element in the proposal agreed today is that existing contracts will have enforced reductions.

I don't feel sorry for them - I've been trying to work with them on another project and they are terrible to work with. Absolutely horrible. My point is that putting caps on the roaming market distorts it. Yes, lets regulate them and make it easy to discern roaming costs or force them to send an advice of charge after each call when roaming (part of the GSM spec and all phones support this). But the current legislation just means non-roamers pay more.


I do remember the days of Roaming on the PacBell network with my Orange contract phone - that was free since PacBell didn't yet know how to do bill backs. But some real examples are
Vodafone passport and T Mobile's Onezone (both introduced before Viviane Reding got involved).

These are not trends but isolated and recent examples of equally rip-off contracts reinforcing a supplier monopoly (as they reduced rates are only available when roaming with the same provider) and where the roaming customer is penalised in particular for short calls

The markets usually decide what costs are appropriate. Except where certain companies are in monopolistic positions. in these cases regulation is needed when you see the behaviour of the companies in these situations.

My bill has come down a lot over the years. And there have been many regulations along the way that have enabled this.

The whole idea with the roaming is that you can be reached on your own phone number ,so I don't see how you can use a payphone for roaming.

When travelling abroad I now use VoIP service from my LapTop. The proliferation of WiFi access points and the relative cheap cost (even €25 a day for WiFi is more than paid for on call-cost savings) make it worthwhile. My landline (VoIP) number travels with me so people calling me don't even need to look up my mobile number and save money themselves. It's a win-win situation. I have a cordless DECT VoIP phone that plugs into my LapTop so no inconvenience for me either or messing about with headsets.

What is supposed to happen is the mobile operators, like many other technology based companies, should innovate and find new services to charge premium rates for, not simply to charge extortionate amounts for stone age (relatively) technology. You seem to be a non-traveller and, rather selfishly it appears, assuming that you will be hurt if the current gross overcharging is ended. To answer this you should just consider for a moment how likely it is that any operator would increase charges for voice calls considering the fierce competition for subscribers. Exactly.

In this case the EU is exactly right to act and stop this blatant price manipulation. The very nature of radio based communications means the competetive field will be limited making the chances of price fixing higher. Sure the mobile operators deserve some extra for routing international mobile calls but seeing how the GSM spec is 20 years old now it seems incredible that a simple GSM speech call from abroad across well established networks can cost so much. Perhaps this lost revenue will, eventually, force them to innovate and come up with new ideas for us all. In the bad old days of telecoms a state monopoly could charge a king's ransom for a brown bacolite phone that barely worked and it is mostly competition that has got us this far. When competition fails then regulators should act.

I use my Nokia E61 signed into an open access point or bridged to my laptop which then calls back to my home asterisk server and out via some least cost routing I have setup. As I mentioned I'm the last to support the mobile operators. And I'm not the only one.


It may be stone age technology but someone has to maintain it. A DSL Internet connection is not €20/month for the bits. No they are a fraction of the cost of employing support staff, running backbone networks, monitoring, investing in upgrades and billing. Somehow these costs have to be recouped or we'd be back to a network of payphones. Perhaps we'd be better of with state telecom monopolies again?

If on the other hand you are suggesting that the carriers are colluding on price, then surely that would be a job for the competition commission in that country?

The legislation for roaming prices within the EU (note only EU roaming, so charges in USA, Switzerland and Turkey will not change) has now been approved and will come into force on June 30. All providers are required to contact their customers by the end of July to offer them new contracts or modified contracts which include the new roaming prices. The customer must agree to this change before the new charges will be applied, and in some case that can take up to one month to implement, so many people may not be able to take advantage of new roaming charges before early September. Revised or replacement contracts must not disadvantage the customer in anyway, so cannot extend the contract period for example.

If you plan on roaming in the EU in the near future you should take action now to force the change from your provider - this could still take up to a month to implement. A suggested letter text to your provider is shown below. The provider should respond in writing with confirmation of the change of tarif, date of changeover and new prices.

Betr.:Umstellung Euro-Tarif

<your address>
<provider address (see below)>
<date>

Mein Kundennummer (your customer number):
Mein Handynummer (your mobile number):

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

bezugnehmend auf die EU-Verordnung zur Senkung der Roaminggebühren im Europäischen
Ausland, welche zum 30. Juni 2007 in Kraft treten wird, beantrage ich für die oben genannte
Mobilfunknummer zum nächstmöglichen Termin die Umstellung des Roaming-Tarifs auf den
günstigsten Tarif, der innerhalb der gesetzlichen Höchstgrenzen (Euro-Tarif) liegt bzw. liegen wird.
Bitte betrachten Sie dieses Schreiben als gegenstandslos, sofern mein Roamingtarif bereits
umgestellt wurde oder automatisch umgestellt wird.
Bitte senden Sie mir eine kurze Bestätigung über den Erhalt des Schreibens. Bitte nennen Sie mir
zudem den ersten Tag der Gültigkeit des Euro-Tarifs und die genaue Bezeichnung des geschalteten
Roamingstarifs.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

(Sign)
Your name

Addresses to send the letter to:
Direct providers:
T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH, Postfach 30 04 44, 53184 Bonn
Vodafone D2 GmbH, Abteilung CAS, 40875 Ratingen
E-Plus Service GmbH & Co. KG, Postfach, 14425 Potsdam
o2 Germany GmbH & Co. OHG, Kundenbetreuung, 90345 Nürnberg

Third party service providers:
debitel AG, Kundenbetreuung, 70545 Stuttgart
mobilcom Communicationstechnik GmbH, Kundenservice, 99076 Erfurt
Talkline GmbH & Co KG, Kundenservice Talkline-Platz 1, 25337 Elmshorn
The Phone House Telecom GmbH, Münsterstr. 109, 48155 Münster/W.
Victorvox AG, Dießemer Bruch 61, 47805 Krefeld

Discounters:
ALDI Talk, c/o E-Plus Service GmbH & Co KG, Postfach, 14425 Potsdam
BASE, c/o E-Plus Service GmbH & Co KG, Postfach, 14425 Potsdam
blau Mobilfunk GmbH, 26081 Oldenburg
callmobile Germany GmbH & Co. KG, Kieler Str. 131, 22769 Hamburg
klarmobil GmbH, Kundenservice Postfach 0661, 24753 Rendsburg
simply communication GmbH, Dießemer Bruch 61, 47805 Krefeld
simyo GmbH, Postfach 17 10, 31817 Springe
smobil, c/o allMobility Deutschland GmbH, Kundenservice, Postfach 100265, 76256 Ettlingen
tchibo direct GmbH, Kundenbetreuung, 90345 Nürnberg

This information summarised and re-printed with permission of www.teltarif.de. A prepared, formatted sample of the above letter can be downloaded in pdf form from here

Bit silly that they have to send a letter and ask their customers if it's ok to give them cheaper calls..

Why don't they just automatically change the roaming costs and save a forest of paper...

Thanks for that YorkshireLad, I'll get that sent off.

Daynov, maybe the hope is that many customers won't bother to reply to the letter, and so the operators can continue to charge them the old higher roaming charges?

Oops! YorkshireLad6 forgot to include the stamp!

The letter is for YOU to send, asking for implementation of the new roaming tariff.

Does that sound right ? How will people know about the change.. They're going to have to send something to the customers...

The whole thing sounds a bit wrong to me.. If they're going to change their roaming policy, why don't they just change it automatically and save a lot of hassle..

The new prices represent a fundamental change the contract you have with your provider. The change has to be agreed by both sides. The provider is obliged to inform you (they'll eventually write to all their customers) and you are required to accept the change before the lower prices can be charged (stupid though that may seem given that it is to the benefit of the customer). Clearly, the longer this process takes, especially over the summer when many people are travelling abroad, the longer they can maintain their inflated revenues from roaming calls. If you initiate the process yourself then you reap the benefits earlier.

Are our providers going to use this opportunity to sign us up to an albeit cheaper roaming contract, but hook us in for another 24 months or something?

They are not allowed to enforce any contractual change beyond the roaming tarifs. That might not stop them, however offering you a great new deal with the new roaming tarifs and another 24 months commitment.
Read the small print!

I've just returned from a trip to England and yesterday got my latest handy bill. It includes about €5 for receiving those automatic SMS's that welcome you to every country you visit. I'd set my phone to be locked into just one provider in England but still kept getting the SMS's, presumably every time I lost and regained the signal. Is there any easy way I can prevent these things being sent to me, because I consider this a complete rip off as I appear to have no control over them and don't need them?

They are required to send you an Flash-SMS (i.e.- one that pops up directly on your screen rather than going into your message centre) with the roaming tariff every time your phone logs into a new (different) roaming partner. I can't imagine why you get the message if repeatedly logging into the same partner, nor can I understand why you are charged (I'm not...)

I've never been charged for receiving an SMS, even when overseas. It should only be when you receive or make a call, or send an SMS that you are charged.

Hmmm, I think I'd better investigate this a bit further.

Whether you are charged for incoming sms depends on your contract.
I don't get charged for incomings in Germany, but I get charged for incomings abroad.
The local network message informing you about the cost of the services abroad is not a regular message, it doesn't even show in the messages log, and it is not charged (at least I never pay for those ones).

That's a joke being charged for incoming ones. You can't even choose whether to accept or not!

Agree with Hutcho - I thought receiving SMS's was always free as otherwise you could send someone hundreds until they ran out of money. They can't be rejected, and can't be diverted, so there's no way to stop them. ;)

First Capped Voice calls, now capped SMS and Data Prices..

EU set to propose slashing text/data costs


and for the 3rd step, capped Operator Termination fees..

Good work by the EU. This is definitely the next rip off that has to be brought under control. It's interesting that they are suggesting 12c be the target for text messages - I pay freaking 19c in Germany! It'll be cheaper to go to Austria and send a text.

Excellent news. The network operators have been using data roaming charges to financially rape customers for ages now.

Last year I was on a business trip in Finland and had my laptop connected over my phone's GPRS for a couple of hours while in a meeting. The amount they charged for that was shocking - several hundred Euros. Luckily it was a company phone and I didn't have to pay it myself.

Absolutely true. But do bear in mind that if they lose this source of revenue, with its inflated margins they'll have to find revenue elsewhere to keep shareholders happy, which will probably mean a substantial increase in domestic charges where margins are much more aggressive.

In the article, they state that texting and roaming make up only 1% of revenue anyway, so I don't think it will hit their margins hurt anyway. In fact, if they offered reasonable rates, especially for data, I'd be tempted to actually use it rather than just turning it off completely because I know I'm going to get shafted.

This has been long overdue. Though I'm not that affected because I also use voip and prepaid phone card (onesuite.com) I can see the roaming charges are getting ridicolously high both with data and voice services.

Another regulation from EU to make per-second billing mandatory for roaming charges. Teltarif news (in german)