EU

Mobile #roaming: Are 'fair use' safeguards fair?

Published

10 years ago

September 26, 2016

'Fair use' safeguards to prevent mobile phone users from taking unfair advantage of EU rules on roaming charges will be debated in the Industry Committee on Monday 26 September at 16h30.

When agreeing on the 'Roam like at Home' safeguard mechanism included in the telecom package approved by the Parliament in October 2015, the European Parliament and Council asked the Commission to develop supporting measures to make it work in practice. These included rules on "fair use" measures that operators can take to prevent “abusive or anomalous usage” of the system, such as the systematic resale of low-price SIM cards for permanent use in other countries.

The Industry Committee will also discuss its draft report on reform of the wholesale roaming market - the prices which operators charge each other for the use of their network by roaming customers – on 12 October, and put it to a vote on 29 November. This reform was proposed by the Commission in June 2016. Wholesale prices have an impact on consumers' final bills, and their caps could be relevant for any surcharge in cases of abuse of “roam like at home”.

You can follow the debate live here.

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