EU Telecom Ministers Approve Roaming Cuts

Politics » BULGARIA IN EU | June 7, 2007, Thursday // 00:00

European Union telecom ministers approved on Thursday the Commission's plan that requires cellphone operators to slash roaming charges on the territory of the bloc.

The decision to cut the fees charged by the mobile operators, in some cases by as much as 70%, becomes European directive and telecoms will have one month to draft new tariff plans for their customers, reflecting the change.

Their customers will have another month to decide whether they will switch to the new conditions or keep the old tariffs.

Some 147 million Europeans used roaming services last year and will feel the impact of the changes already this summer.

The plan sets a ceiling price of 49 eurocents per minute for outgoing calls and 24 eurocents per minute for incoming calls when users are outside their operator's national network.

By 2009, the price will go down to 43 eurocents and 19 eurocents, respectively.

It took four rounds of talks between the European Commission, the European Parliament and member states to reach a compromise, which was endorsed by MEPs last month.

Bulgaria has three cellphone operators - Austria Telekom's M-Tel, Greek Cosmote-owned Globul and the mobile arm of dominant telecom BTC, Vivatel - and all of them have announced plans to implement the regulations well within the schedule provided by the new directive.

But Globul, also expressed its "concern with the potentially negative impact of such administrative pressure on the development of the EU roaming services market," echoing the long-standing industry opposition to the proposed cuts.

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