Members of the European Parliament agreed to discard roaming charges fees across Europe. Under this agreement, making calls, sending texts and using the internet will now cost the same in any country of the EU, starting from 15 June.
The EU will limit the wholesale prices operators charge one another to €0.032 per minute and €0.01 per SMS from June 15. The wholesale price cap for data will come down more gradually, beginning at €7.70 per gigabyte on June 15 followed by reductions on Jan. 1 each year until it reaches €2.50 on Jan. 1, 2022.
Miapetra Kumpula-Natri (S&D, FI), who is steering the legislation through Parliament, said,
People all over the EU have waited for us to drop roaming charges in June 2017. Now all the negotiations are ready and we can deliver what was promised. Like consumer organizations all over Europe, we, too, see this as a great victory for the European consumers. The agreed caps ensure cost coverage for efficient operators throughout Europe but are low enough to sustain competition on the European telecom markets.
Lower caps for data transfers would enable EU consumers to access more audio-visual content when travelling from a country to another. This could also open up markets for small and virtual telecoms operators. It must be noted that the agreement still needs to be formally approved by the Industry Committee, Parliament as a whole and national ministers.