The European Parliament has approved the Telecom Single Market legislation, opening the way to an end to roaming surcharges from mid-2017 and protection for net neutrality across the EU. The MEPs approved the text without any amendments to the legislation approved by the EU Council earlier this month, allowing the bill to become law after its publication in the Official Journal in the coming days.
The final text is significantly watered down compared to the legislation passed by the previous parliament in April 2014, which had called for an end to roaming in December 2015 and much stricter net neutrality rules. This was later vetoed by the EU Council under pressure from telecom operators, resulting in another year of negotiations on the proposal.
Under the new law, mobile operators will no longer be able to charge extra for calls, texts or data when roaming in the EU and EEA countries from 15 June 2017. The concept of 'roam like home' will be introduced gradually from 30 April 2016 already, when customers will pay the same as for national communications when roaming, plus a small surcharge. The surcharge will be capped at 5 cents per minute for calls, 2 cents per SMS and 5 cents per MB of data. The cap on charges for incoming calls will be determined later this year and is expected to be considerably lower than for outgoing calls.
Operators will still be able to opt out if they can prove they are unable to cover their costs without charging more for roaming than domestic services. National regulators will have the right to evaluate whether any such surcharges are justified. To protect against abuse in cases such as customers opting for "permanent roaming" with a cheaper foreign Sim, operators may also be allowed to add surcharges above a fair-use amount of roaming. It will be up to the European Commission and telecoms regulators to determine how this will work.
The new law also sets a common standard for net neutrality throughout the EU. Internet providers will be required to treat all traffic equally, with no blocking or slowing specific content, applications or services from selected senders or to selected receivers. The only exceptions allowed are compliance with court orders and laws, preventing network congestion and combating cyber-attacks. If such traffic management measures are needed, they must be "transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate" and may not last any longer than necessary. Operators may still offer "specialised" services, such as guaranteed speeds or quality for specific customers like businesses, as long as this does not impact the overall internet quality for all users on the network.
In a further step towards transparency, the law requires ISPs to be more transparent about actual speeds delivered when marketing their access services, both mobile and fixed. End-users will have greater rights to compensation or to end the contract if the speed varies significantly or regularly from the expected offer. The national regulators will be responsible for enforcing the rules.
The operators association ETNO issued a cautious statement after the parliament's vote, saying it was a consistent supporter of uniform rules across the EU, rather than a patchwork of national regulations, as has emerged with net neutrality to date. However, it said the key to the new legislation would lie in its enforcement. In particular, it's concerned about how to develop new, differentiated services, such as connected driving, e-health and different content distribution models, while sticking to the net neutrality rules. "This requires network management as well as differentiation of services," ETNO said in a statement. "Uniform implementation of the rules across Europe will therefore prove crucial."
On roaming, ETNO signaled its members will be keen to call on the cost-recovery clauses built into the legislation. The industry group said implementation of the roaming ban must not distort national markets and "the common objective should be to make sure that the Regulation does not pick winners and losers among countries".
