Brussels, 04/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 4 March, the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) granted a mandate to the Latvian Presidency to begin trialogue discussions with the European Parliament on the “connected continent” package. Member states had finally managed to reach an agreement on roaming prices and net neutrality. These proved to be the two stumbling blocks in the “connected continent” package, which the most recent Telecommunications Council last December did not manage to resolve (see EUROPE 11206). Ministers subsequently met up informally to make further progress on these two points (see EUROPE 11236).
Roaming: on the question of roaming, the Council stance sets up a new pricing mechanism, which will make it much cheaper to use your mobile phone when travelling abroad in the EU. This kind of “Roam like at Home” model will allow consumers to make and receive calls, send SMSs and use data services without paying anything extra on top of the domestic fee. Once this basic roaming allowance is used up, the operator may charge a fee, but this fee will be much lower than current charges. In the case of calls made, SMSs sent and data used, the roaming fee could not in any case be higher than the maximum wholesale rate that operators pay for using the networks of other member states. The European Commission will proceed to a revision of the rules in the middle of 2018 in an effort to see if further measures need to be adopted to gradually get rid of roaming costs, explains the Council. The 2016 deadline set by the Commission for totally scrapping these costs has therefore been extended.
Internet neutrality: the Commission is proposing to introduce a legal framework for the open Internet principle, free of access discrimination but within certain limits, so as not to restrict innovation. The Council agreed on a flexible framework that will allow operators to propose “specialised services” for an additional cost, provided that they do not restrict Internet access for basic users. It will be up to the national regulatory authorities to ensure that this condition is respected, under the supervision of the Office of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). (Isabelle Lamberty)