The Council and the European Parliament reached an agreement for the adoption of the draft regulation on roaming on public mobile communications networks within the EU. These rules will lead to a structural and durable solution to the high cost of using mobile phones and other smart devices whilst travelling in the EU. The European Parliament is expected to approve this agreement in May 2012 and the Council in June.

The agreement reached on new EU Roaming rules between the Council and the European Parliament supposes the preliminary step to pay the way for the adoption of such rules by the summer of this year. The Industry Committee in the European Parliament backed the agreement in February 2012. In particular, the rules will create more competition in the roaming market. In the meantime they impose new safeguard limits on consumer prices, including a new price cap for data roaming, which will progressively bring prices down from current high levels until the benefits of competition have fully kicked in.

In June 2007, the first roaming regulation was adopted covering only voice traffic. In June 2009, it was amended to extend its scope to regulate SMS and wholesale-level data roaming services too. The current roaming regulation will expire on 30 June 2012. Under the new rules, that will therefore enter into force on 1st July 2012, consumers will pay no more than: 29 cents per minute to make a call, 8 cents per minute to receive a call, 9 cents to send a text message, and 70 cents per Megabyte (MB) to download data or browse the Internet whilst travelling abroad (charged per Kilobyte used). The EU's Roaming rules will progressively lower current retail price caps on voice and texting (SMS) services and introduce a new retail price cap for mobile data services. These caps will operate as a safeguard for consumers until 30 June 2017, until competition has driven retail prices down.

In addition, the new regulation also lays down rules aimed at increasing price transparency and improving the provision of information on charges to roaming customers. The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications will be involved in the technical implementation of the regulation. The Commission will review the functioning of this regulation and will report to the European Parliament and the Council no later than 30 June 2016.