Reding launched her ultimatum on 11 February before CEOs from the mobile phone industry gathered at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
"What I am asking for are credible, but also do-able, price reductions for data roaming by the whole industry on a voluntary basis by 1 July," said the EU's telecoms chief. Reding added that she had "no appetite at all for regulation again," but that she will be forced to proceed if no significant changes occur by that date.
The Commission reckons that a text message sent abroad can cost up to 20 times more than one sent at home. On average, sending a text message costs between €5 and €10 cents within an EU member state, but users can be charged over €50 cents if they send a text from another EU country. For downloading data, the costs are at least four to six times higher than equivalent domestic rates.
"The EU cannot accept that mobile operators make up to 20 times more profits on roaming than on their domestic customers," Reding said, using data collected by the European Regulators Group (ERG) published in January. To remedy this, the Commissioner suggested the "voluntary" introduction of EU roaming packages "that allow consumers to download data throughout the 27 EU countries at the same price as domestically, subject only to a single competitive additional charge".
According to Commissioner Reding, the extra charges imposed on roaming are not justified by additional costs to operators, and are therefore seen as "exploitation" of consumers. Reding openly said she would accept extra charges for text messages sent abroad of up to €2 or €3 cents, and wholesale rates of €25 or €50 cents per megabyte downloaded. These numbers "indicate the level at which the Commission could consider pitching regulation if the market does not follow these recent moves," she pointed out.
In her speech, Reding underlined that the Commission has to act in this field because "national regulators are unable to address these issues unilaterally". Against these shortfalls, Reding repeated the necessity of a European Telecom Market Authority to replace ERG, as suggested in the Telecoms package proposed in November (see our Links Dossier).
