Brussels, 08/02/2008 (Agence Europe) - Five mobile network operators have concluded an agreement on the wholesale prices for data transfer on their networks. They hope to create a snowball effect on prices by inviting other operators to rally behind their initiative. Consumers could thereby benefit from a substantial reduction in their bills when transferring data from one country to another. At a time when mobile internet use is becoming a reality for consumers at home, the tariffs applied for data roaming can be up to 50 times the price offered by the domestic operator. This is an unacceptable situation in the view of Commissioner Viviane Reding, who is responsible for the information society and media. Last week at the British Chamber of Commerce she promised to force a reaction from operators at the GSM conference due to be held soon in Barcelona, brandishing the threat of new regulations if they did not reduce tariffs by the summer.
Five operators have therefore acted on the European Commission's demands. The networks concerned are the Dutch network KPN and its Belgian and German subsidiaries, BASE and E-Plus respectively, British network 3 and Polish network Play. Between them they cover ten European markets and a population of more than 295 million consumer, or 60% of the total population of the European Union. They propose to apply a maximum wholesale rate of €0.25 per megabyte (MB) of data from 1 March. This is a substantial reduction on the €5.24 per MB currently charged. “Voice roaming was one example. Now it's time to support the demand for data roaming in Europe”, said Stan Miller, President of the KPN Mobile Group. Christian Salbaing, from Hutchison 3G Europe, concedes that wholesale data roaming prices must now be brought into line with the real costs of such transfers. “We believe the benefit to consumers will be a move away from inflated per-event based prices to charging on a more consistent flat-rate subscription-based model which is what we are all now used to experiencing with the internet”, he commented. According to Chris Bannister, the CEO of Play, “2008 will be the year when the participants in this initiative will change the rules for data usage making Mobile Broadband truly mobile”. British company Vodafone also announced a reduction in its rate for data transfer in Europe on Friday 8 February, with an average 45% reduction in its monthly tariffs. “Our focus now is to offer consumers, who are increasingly using their mobile phones to access the Internet whilst in their hotel room, in a café or on the beach, with predictable data roaming tariffs”, explained Arun Sarin, the Chief Executive of Vodafone. (I.L.)