February 10, 2008
EU pressures operators to lower data roaming rates
After forcing Europe's mobile operators to cut rates for making and receiving phone calls abroad, the European Union's top telecoms regulator has set her sights on prices for downloading and surfing the Web wirelessly>.
EU Commissioner Viviane Reding has already warned carriers that prices for so-called data roaming have to fall by the summer or else -- a message she will likely repeat at the industry's main trade show, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which starts on Monday.
A study by the European Regulators Group published in January found that transferring one megabyte of data -- the size of a large spreadsheet -- while roaming on average cost 5.24 euros ($7.59) in the EU in the third quarter of last year.
By contrast, several operators offer domestic data plans that include a gigabyte of data, or roughly a thousand megabytes, for less than 50 euros.
Telecoms consultant John Strand said the margins on data roaming were "sky high," but he estimated it only represented around 2 to 4 percent of an operator's revenue."
[via Reuters]
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