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EU Roaming Costs

Cost of calls within the EU brought down last summer. However, cost of calls outside of the EU have risen to compensate for the Eurotariff.

Author: John Gray

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The European Commission forced mobile networks to bring down the cost of calls within the European Union in June 2007. The maximum cost of a call within the European Union was set to be €0.49 per minute.

All of the mobile networks in the United Kingdom have managed to abide by this rule by the deadline date, but since the EU roaming regulation came into force in June last year, networks have reported roaming revenue declines into the hundreds of millions of Euros.

So this fall in revenue may account for the rise in the cost of calls outside the European Union, it has been reported that the cost of calls has risen by as much as 163%. According to Informa Telecoms and Media the average price of a call to Italy from Russia was €3.67 a minute in 2006 but has risen 25%, to €4.58.

So while the networks are making less on call revenue within the European Union it seems that they are determined to claw back the difference from elsewhere. While the European Commission are concerned about the rises in costs elsewhere sadly it does not have any legal instrument to legislate outside of the 27 EU member states.

The UK regulator Ofcom is working with the European Regulator Group (ERG), which represents the regulators of both EU and non-EU European countries, in “monitoring the situation” regarding the cost of roaming outside the EU. The ERG has collected data about retail and wholesale roaming charges outside the EU in reports covering Q2, 3 and 4 of 2007 and Q1 this year.

About Author

This and many other articles on mobile phones and the latest mobile phone deals was written by John Gray.

John Gray's writing can often be found at http://www.onecompare.com

Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com/author-john-gray-7689.html