EU Agrees To End Roaming Fees By June 2017
The European Union has agreed to scrap mobile roaming charges across 28-country bloc by June 2017. The deal is a part of an overhaul of the continent's telecoms market to boost growth and innovation.
"Under the agreement, roaming surcharges in the European Union will be abolished as of 15 June 2017," Latvia, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said in a statement after 12 hours of talks with EU lawmakers.
Roaming fees will still be subject to fair use policy.
As a stop-gap from 2016, roaming fees will be capped at five cents per megabyte for mobile data, five cents per minute for calls and two cents per SMS message, Independent.ie noted.
The EU also plans to order telecoms operators to treat all Internet traffic equally and that blocking would only be allowed to counter cyber attacks or during peak periods.
The agreement needs formal approval by the Parliament and the bloc's 28 governments. "National borders will no longer be decisive in causing charges," Guenther Oettinger, the EU's commissioner for the Digital Economy, said.
