ETNO, the trade association that brings together incumbent EU telecom firms such as Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica, said Commission meddling into data roaming encourages "price fixing" instead of healthy competition in the sector.
It is the first time that major telecom operators have declared their opposition to the new pricing measures, after having avoided making any clear statement on the subject for months.
A ceiling on text message tariffs is "absurd", said ETNO Director Michael Bartholomew at a briefing with Brussels journalists on Tuesday (7 May). Alfredo Acebal, director of EU regulatory affairs at Telefonica, asked whether it is the role of the Commission "to put prices on everything".
ETNO's comments came as the Commission launched a public consultation to review the roaming regulation, which infuriated telecoms groups last year by placing price caps on cross-border mobile phone calls (roaming). The consultation could potentially extend the regulation's capping system to data roaming.
But the industry made it clear that it will refuse to abide by the deadline set by Brussels. The GSM Association (GSMA), which brings together the top mobile telephone operators in Europe and throughout the world, said figures provided by the European Regulators Group (ERG) in January 2008 indicate that data roaming charges fell by 10% across Europe between the second and third quarters of 2007.
The Commission intends to go ahead and, by launching a new consultation, put further proposals on the table. These would not only introduce ceilings on data roaming prices, but would also potentially extend the duration of the current regulation on voice roaming, which is due to expire by the end of June 2010.
In addition, the Commission intends to further explore possible measures against per-minute tariffs, with Brussels clearly expressing a preference for per-second tariffs that match costumer consumption more closely. Per-minute tariffs are rounded up in the majority of cases (EurActiv 18/01/08).
