EU puts an end to mobile roaming

The European Union reached a deal early Wednesday morning that should pave the way for consumers to use their mobile phones throughout the 28-country region without paying roaming fees.

Three-way negotiations between the European Parliament, Council and Commission ended just after midnight with a pact on the pace of slashing rates telecom companies charge each other, according to the office of Parliament’s rapporteur Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, a Finnish member of the Socialists & Democrats, who tweeted "Goodbye roaming". 

The bloc agreed to cap wholesale mobile data prices at €7.75 per gigabyte from June 15, decreasing to €6 as of January 1, 2018. The fees will slide to €4.5 per gigabyte in 2019, €3.5 in 2020, €3 in 2021 and then to €2.5 in 2022, Kumpula-Natri’s office said.

Mobile wholesale rates are the prices telecoms companies charge each other when their customers travel across rival networks.

Senior EU diplomats thwarted opposition from Germany and France, according to a source briefed on negotiations, after the two nations argued reducing the fees mobile operators could charge endangered their business models.

The battle against roaming charges took on an added significance after Britain voted to quit the bloc last year in a surge of anti-EU sentiment and Brussels has sought to show it works for ordinary citizens.

"Today we deliver on our promise," said Andrus Ansip, European Commission vice president.

The deal will allow EU citizens to “roam like at home” from the middle of this year in line with a regulation agreed in late 2015. The agreement still needs to be formally approved by the Industry Committee, Parliament as a whole and national ministers before entering into force.