The Competitiveness Council meeting reached an agreement to move forward the regulation on roaming on public mobile communications networks within the EU. The current regulation will expire on 30 June 2012. The new regulation revises the current regulation by introducing pro-competitive structural measures and extending its validity until 30 June 2022.

Following the approval of the European Parliament on 10th of May, the Council adopted new roaming rules that will be applied from 1 of July 2012. The structural measures introduced by this new regulation aim to tackle the lack of competition and consumer choice which leads to high roaming prices. Particularly, the objective is to establish a common approach to ensure that roaming users do not pay excessive prices for Union-wide roaming services when travelling within the Union.

With the new regulation, customers will be allowed to sign up for an alternative mobile roaming offer, separate from their contract for national mobile services, whilst using the same phone number from 1 July 2014. The regulation sets out the conditions for wholesale access to public mobile communications networks to provide roaming services. In addition, in order to allow alternative operators to enter the roaming market, the regulation allows for a reasonable margin between the tariff ceilings for wholesale and retail prices.

On the other hand, the regulation also lays down rules aimed at increasing price transparency and improving the provision of information on charges to roaming customers. 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.