EU commissioner Neelie Kroes (responsible for the Digital Agenda policy area) will present the new proposals to achieve lower roaming charges today, in a press conference at 12:30. You can watch the livestream here.
For a preview of what the new proposal is expected to contain, have a look into our dossier: Roaming press dossier – 06 July 11, 11:30.
Update: ZDNet UK has published a great overview over the proposed changes. Head over to them to read it…
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Since 1 July, the latest round of mobile roaming price cuts for calls and SMS in the EU applies. From now on, mobile network operators are not allowed to take more than 35ct/min (+VAT) for making calls, 11ct/Min (+VAT) for receiving calls and 11ct/SMS (+VAT).
Europeans for Fair Roaming welcomes those changes which are a part of the current EU legislation on roaming but calls on all EU institutions to make sure prices will be lowered further. Prices can still be up to 10 times higher for making roaming calls than they are when you use your phone at home and you still have to pay if someone else calls you while you are roaming. Furthermore, there are still no price caps for data roaming (i.e. using the internet when abroad) which means travellers with internet-enabled smartphones can still ramp up expensive phone bills.
Another issue of concern is the fact that the current legislation will end next year and will have to be renewed until the end of 2011 to ensure customers remain protected against high roaming fees in the upcoming years.
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With the beginning of summer and travelling time, travellers are warned over the high costs of using their mobile phones when abroad. When abroad, most mobile phone operators still charge roaming fees that are several times higher than what customers pay at home.
While prices for phone calls and SMS have been regulated within the European Union to save users from the worst bill shocks, the costs are still several times higher than for domestic use. Especially the costs for using data services such as surfing the web or sending e-mails are not yet subject to effective controls and can quickly get out of hand. This means that mobile phone users, especially those with modern smart phones or tablets can still get an unpleasant surprise after returning home. Continue reading
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The European Commission will present its proposals for updated EU roaming rules to provide a long-term solution to cut roaming costs when the current Roaming Regulation expires at the end of June 2012. The Commission intends to address the underlying lack of competition in the markets for voice, text and data roaming, thereby solving in a structural way the problem of excessive retail prices for voice, text and data roaming, while foreseeing safeguard retail price caps not only for voice and text roaming but also data roaming. In the Digital Agenda for Europe adopted in May 2010 the European Commission set the objective that differences between roaming and national telecoms tariffs should approach zero by 2015. Today voice roaming prices within Europe are still more than three times the level of domestic charges. For data roaming the consumer often pays less than 5 cents for downloading a megabyte of data at home, but this may turn into €2.60 per MB when downloading abroad. Wholesale data roaming charges have fallen significantly but consumers are not seeing that in lower retail prices.
Read the whole article here: http://europa.eu/eucalendar/event/id/227143/mode/standalone
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Europeans for fair roaming 
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