EU to propose law to cut SMS roaming rates: Report

By Staff reports

July 15, 2008

EU cuts FRU

A report published in The New York Times expects that the European Commission today will propose new legislation to cut the cost of sending and receiving SMS messages on mobile phones while roaming.

The report, from the IDG News Service's Brussels bureau, said EU information society and media commissioner Viviane Reding will make the announcement.

"The commissioner will mention figures that were suggested during the consultation and by the European Regulators' Group, but no figure has been decided on yet," the article quoted an anonymous source close to Ms. Reding's office as saying.

The legislation will not cover other types of data transfers through mobile, including Internet services and email messages, the source told IDG reporter Paul Meller.

Also, no specific SMS roaming price caps will be mentioned today.

The European Regulators' Group in January reported that the EU users, on average, had to pay 50 cents to send an SMS message in the third quarter of last year. The cost inched downwards a couple of cents or so last month, but that was not enough for Ms. Reding.

The European Commission's decision to cut SMS roaming costs follows last year's debut of price caps on voice roaming within the EU. Those caps are said to have bring down voice roaming prices across the EU by 60 percent, according to the Commission.

The IDG article pointed out that current roaming law in the EU mandates that carriers offer customers a Eurotariff for voice calls when roaming in other EU member states.

Also introduced in that law were ceilings of 78 cents per minute for making mobile calls and 38 cents per minute for receiving calls, decreasing to 73 cents and 35 cents, respectively, by the end of August and to 68 cents and 30 cents, respectively, on Aug. 30, 2009.

As expected, carriers are not enthusiastic about price caps.

The GSM Association, as reported in the article, drew attention to the fact that several European carriers have dropped their SMS roaming charges through a cut in their standard SMS rates or the debut of special packages targeted to roamers.