New roaming price caps stir telecom market

“Regulating roaming tariff is a significant state intervention in a market economy, which could have negative effects on the competition,” Dorin Oditiu, Manager at Orange Romania told NewsIn. According to Oditiu, strict roaming tariff regulations affect competition between mobile phone operators, who will no longer be able to set different roaming fees from now on. In Vodafone’s case, company officials said that the number of clients using the roaming service Vodafone Passport reached 450,000 about one year after it was launched.

“Customers who have already chosen the Vodafone Passport program can continue to have these tariffs and will not be forced to adopt the eurotariff imposed by the European Union,” Vodafone officials said.
Once the new law is in place, Vodafone customers can adopt the eurotariffs at any time, and two months later, those who have not chosen the eurotariff by then will be subject thereto automatically. Before the European Union vote, Cosmote officials told Business Standard that introducing this regulation could affect the entire domestic market disproportionately.   

     If everything goes according to plan, approximately 147 million European citizens could benefit from lower prices as of August.
“A specific date cannot be given, but technically the law might be issued before the end of June. Based on such an optimistic scenario, customers could have reduced rates as of August,” Paul Rubig, rapporteur on the proposed regulation on international roaming prices, told NewsIn.

The new agreement states that the price cannot exceed €0.49 per minute for making a call while abroad, and the level will drop over the next two years to €0.46 and €0.43, respectively.  
For receiving an incoming call while abroad, prices will fall to €0.24 per minute in the first year, then to €0.22 and €0.19, respectively.

On June 7, the Council of Europe will meet in Luxembourg to decide on the regulation for reducing roaming charges. Zsolt Nagy, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, will represent Romania at the summit, where he is expected to vote in favor of this new law.

In March 2007, roaming prices charged by mobile operators in Romania reached €9.52 per minute, while the cheapest was €3.12 per minute. In Bulgaria and Hungary roaming charges for making or receiving a call stood at about €5.