BEREC International Roaming Report

BEREC is the recently created “Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications”.

It published a report about the roaming price evolution in Europe between April 2009 and December 2009 and compared the figures with those from previous studies in 2007 and 2008.

In 2009 the new EU regulatory framework on telecommunications imposed price caps on wholesale and retail prices for roaming voice calls, as well as for international SMS traffic.

It also put a cap on the wholesale price for data roaming (€1 per MB).
 

The report shows the regulation was applied correctly in the EU member states and that the drop in cross-border mobile prices for the consumer had a positive effect on the volume. This demonstrates lower prices stimulate the usage of international mobile services.

For roaming data services there remains a significant gap between wholesale and the non-regulated retail prices, showing margins of 200-300 %. This phenomenon will be further investigated by the EU to define if more stringent regulation of this sector is required or if the market can self-regulate the end-user prices for data roaming in order to stimulate consumption.
 

Overview of the present price caps on international mobile traffic applicable in the EU:
 

The complete report can be consulted on the web.