Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-24-Speech-3-354"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20080924.33.3-354"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"You know that the Commission yesterday decided on a proposal for the second roaming package
this time on SMS and data roaming. Parliament will remember very well that this analysis of the market was done at the request of Parliament which, during the voice roaming package in June last year, put in Article 11 of the Regulation that the Commission should come back to SMS and data roaming in due course in 2008. That is what the Commission did, and you know that we have proposed price caps.
That brings me to the question of price fixing. No, we do not fix prices. We fix ceilings under which operators have the flexibility to compete and to innovate, either with roaming offers below the maximum oral tariff ceilings or with other packages which customers might then chose. So, flexibility is given.
As regards SMS, the evidence suggests that prices have been more or less static over the last year and remain at levels that cannot be justified by reference to the underlying cost, and the SMS market presents roughly the same problems as the market in voice roaming.
In February this year, I went to the GSM Association World Congress in Barcelona and warned the industry. I spoke personally with industry leaders to tell them that they had time to bring down prices by themselves and that the deadline was 1 July. What we saw is that the prices between last year and this year for SMS roaming did not move at all. Our proposal therefore is to cap the retail charge at a maximum of 11 cents and the wholesale charge at a maximum of 4 cents.
Turning to data roaming, we have included actions to deal with the very famous cases of bill shocks where customers have to pay several thousand euros when they come back from one or two weeks abroad, because they used their mobile phone for data downloading in the same way as at home where a data download per megabyte could cost between 5 and 15 cents. Abroad, it can go up to 16 euros per megabyte so you can imagine what kind of bills you can receive if you are now aware of what is happening.
That is why we have proposed several measures. The first is a transparency measure to inform citizens crossing a border what data roaming will cost. The second is a measure where the consumer can fix, together with his operator, a ceiling over which he does not want to pay any more so that communications are then cut; and the third is because we have seen that the whole problem here comes from highly overpriced wholesale costs which one operator imposes on another. That is why we propose a wholesale cap at one euro per megabyte, hoping that normal price structures can then be developed and offered to consumers."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples