The European Union will adopt new rules to end mobile phone roaming fees by mid-2017. Under the agreement, roaming surcharges in the European Union will be abolished as of 15 June 2017. However, roaming providers will be able to apply a ‘fair use policy’ to prevent abusive use of roaming. This would include using roaming services for purposes other than periodic travel.
Roaming fees will already go down on 30 April 2016, when the current retail caps will be replaced by a maximum surcharge of €0.05 per minute for calls, €0.02 for SMSs and €0.05 per megabyte for data.
The European Parliament is also planning the first EU-wide open Internet rules (Net Neutrality), whereby operators will have to treat all traffic equally when providing Internet access services.
“This is a great success for the European Union and the Latvian presidency”, stressed Anrijs Matīss, the Latvian Minister for Transport. “The Latvian presidency has put a lot of effort into finalising the Telecom Single Market proposal – we revived the proposal from scratch and reached agreement. This would not have been possible without the commitment and constructive approach of the member states, the European Parliament and the European Commission”.
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/06/30-roaming-charges/
