The European Commission has launched a public consultation in order to seek the views of consumers, businesses, Telecom operators and public authorities and gather their ideas on the best ways to boost competition in roaming services, while protecting the interests of European consumers and businesses. The consultation runs until 11 February 2011 and will provide a basis for a review of the current Roaming Regulation which the European Commission has to carry out before the end of June 2011.

The Commission Consultation on a review of the functioning of the Roaming Regulation (Regulation (EC) No 544/2009), seeks to identify the extent the current EU rules on roaming services have worked in practice.

Particular areas of interest are the impact of EU rules on mobile users and service providers and what further measures could be taken to promote competition and consumer satisfaction. The public consultation also seeks views on the most appropriate regulatory or policy options in the short, medium and long term to boost competition in the market and the extent to which technological developments could improve the functioning of the market for voice, text message (SMS) and data services.

In particular, the Commission wants feedback on how to meet the Digital Agenda's target of a Single Market for Telecom services in which the difference between national and roaming charges should approach zero by 2015. The Commission wants all roaming customers to have rapid and easy access to competitive roaming tariffs for voice, SMS and data, where operators' prices to consumers would be more closely aligned with the true cost of efficiently providing roaming services.

Responses to the public consultation will feed into the Commission's 2011 review of roaming rules and will help the Commission to propose the most appropriate solutions to improve the functioning of the market.

Commission's actions in the European market of mobile phone roaming services

The 2007 EU Roaming Regulation introduced wholesale and retail price caps for roaming charges and included measures to increase transparency. This Regulation was later amended in 2009, lowering the prices of voice, text messages and data services further, and introducing a "Euro-SMS tariff" limiting the price of an SMS to 0.11 Euro (excluding VAT) and, a wholesale cap per MegaByte uploaded or downloaded for data.

Also from 1st July 2010, travellers' data-roaming bill is automatically limited to 50 Euro per month excluding VAT, unless chosen another limit, and operators have to send users a warning when they reach 80% of their data-roaming bill limit. Since that same date the price cap for making a roaming voice calls is 0.39 Euro per minute (excluding VAT), while receiving a roaming call costs a maximum of 0.15 Euro per minute (excluding VAT).

The rules established by the 2009 Roaming Regulation will be valid until 30 June 2012.