EU may end all roaming charges

[wco81]

OK, another update. It's still on schedule for 15 June 2017. Remember that it was originally to be in 2016 if not earlier.

They just released an update, where they're wrangling with "Fair Use Policy" or FUP so that operators can find redress if the free-roaming or "Roam Like at Home" (RLAH - you got to love these bureaucratic acronyms) is abused.

The thing driving this is the wide range of prices in the EU:

For example, consumers in Latvia spend on average €3.70 a month and Irish consumers an average of €23.80 per month for using their mobile phones.

Europeans have different travel habits across the EU, and there are also different network costs in visited countries. A recent European Commission study also shows that consumer retail offers vary between Member States. For example, the cheapest monthly deals offering 1GB of data, 600 minutes of calls and 225 SMS range from €57 in Hungary to €8 in Estonia.

https://www.neweurope.eu/press-relea...he-eu-in-2017/

So for FUP to protect operators, there was first an effort to reduce wholesale roaming caps between carriers. That is apparently not yet finalized.

Then there have been various proposals, like limiting the free roaming time or data amount. Some operators claimed most Europeans only roamed 6-12 days, while others claimed it was much more. I've seen figures proposed like 90 total days of free roaming per year and no more than 30 consecutive days of roaming, to make sure people aren't using cheaper SIM cards from one country in another on a permanent basis.

Or another proposal would be to allow carriers to impose surcharges for those customers who roamed too much.

All kinds of documentation here. There's some interesting data, like the AARPU (average mobile revenues per user) in each country:

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-...ing-regulation

Note the date, they only published this stuff on 12/15/2016, just 6 months before the target date for free roaming. But they're still defining, deliberating and sending out proposals to each countries and presumably operators.

Will they get all these rules hammered away in time or will there be another delay?

[peterdoo]

The rules are there now. The regulation is there since long time already and the implementing act that defines the fair use policy (FUP) has been approved last week as published in your link. The only thing that is missing are the wholesale prices which will be used to calculate the maximum amount of data that one will be able to use without surcharge in EU-roaming.

The whole thing got quite complicated. In short, the voice/SMS EU-roaming should be possible without surcharge without any additional FUP. For data on postpaid one will be able to roam during about 60 days within any 4 months period without surcharge up to the maximum of:
2 x monthly amount excl. VAT / wholesale price per MB.

For prepaid it seems that the operators will be able to limit the amounts of surcharge-free roaming to very low amounts, if they wish to.

If an operator wishes so and can show that this is necessary, he may request to be able to continue to charge roaming surcharges from the day one of the free EU-roaming on.