The European Commission’s draft blueprint – hailed as an end to additional charges for EU citizens when they cross national borders inside the bloc – was withdrawn on the orders of commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker.
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The document, shared by the Commission on Monday, proposed limiting customers to 90 days of fee-free roaming per year, and obliged them to connect to their roaming provider’s home network at least once every 30 days.
But the EU’s latest proposal, first outlined on Monday, would have let mobile networks charge customers who were using their phones overseas for either (1) more than 30 days in a row, or (2) more than 90 days in a single year.
Roaming charges are set to disappear next year.
A reason for Juncker’s decision, and details on when a new proposal would be provided were not given.
An interim limit on roaming charges has been in place since April, with a full ban anticipated by June 2017.
Monday’s proposal would have let companies charge roaming fees to consumers who used their phones overseas for more than 90 days in a year or for more than 30 days in a row.
“It is simply not good enough for our president and therefore he has instructed us to work harder, try harder and come back with something better”, said European Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein, without providing concrete timing on when it would come back with a new version.
Last year, the European Parliament agreed that extra costs faced by EU travellers using a mobile phone would be scrapped in June 2017.
“We have been listening and now we are going back to the drawing board”, he said.
“The pressure from the EPP group bears fruit”.
“This is what we have promised to the people and we keep this promise”. Speaking to TrustedReviews about the EU’s plans to scrap roaming earlier this year, Rishi Malhotra, Three’s Lead International Product Manager, said: “If that fair usage policy was really flexible, operators would start leading to a loss”.
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“My understanding is that the arrangements that exist at the moment will be in place for a while, and actually if we are going to leave the European Union then it will take a lot of time to unwind those regulations”, Topley added. These said that European customers should be able to roam at domestic prices for a total of 90 days a year when traveling elsewhere in the bloc.
