Brussels, 24/06/2008 (Agence Europe) - ECTA, the organisation bringing together new telecommunications operators, is encouraging the European Commission to pursue its efforts to regulate mobile phone termination charges. In a press release, the association explains that incumbent mobile operators were imposing “excessive” and “discriminatory” charges for connecting calls to each other's networks. ECTA said these charges are, “not based on costs”. The president of ECTA, Innocenzo Genna emphasised that, “Our estimate is that over the last ten years, across the 27 EU countries, this amounts to a total in excess of €100bn of consumers' money”. Mobile termination retail rates are on average 9-10 times higher than fixed termination rates and also significantly vary between €2-18. Viviane Reding, the Commissioner of the information society and media is expected to publish a recommendation on call termination charges, which aims to introduce greater coherence in the EU27. The recommendation will define the methodology for objectively calculating call termination fees and seeks to gradually but substantially reduce these charges over the next three years and bring them in line with real costs. The Commission hopes that these tariffs fall, in the long term, by between 1 and 1.5 cents. (I.L./trans.r.h)