Europe to end cellphone roaming charges in 2017

European officials approved on Tuesday a series of sweeping changes to how mobile and wired Internet service works in the region, pushing through rules that outlaw mobile roaming charges and forbid providers from giving preferences to some types of online traffic.

As part of the new rules, which are expected to be officially approved by European governments over the next few months, officials here banned cellphone roaming charges, beginning in 2017, when people travel across the 28-member European Union. The changes also outline how Internet service providers must treat data over their networks, forbidding broadband providers from slowing down any particular service.

The changes are part of long-awaited overhauls aimed at improving how Europeans connect to and use mobile services. Lawmakers say they want the new rules to foster greater economic activity in the European Union, which in many ways is still divided by national boundaries.

Debate about the new rules, more than two years in the making, has pitted many of the region’s telecommunications operators against consumer groups. To appease both sides, lawmakers here hailed cuts in cellphone roaming charges while allowing companies to potentially charge extra for access to their networks under certain circumstances.

Policymakers say the change in roaming fees will allow individuals to use their mobile devices across Europe just as Americans can call, text and use the Internet on their smartphones from California to New York. They also say the new regulations for broadband provide a form of net neutrality, or the concept that all data should be treated equally.

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“Europeans have been calling and waiting for the end of roaming charges, as well as for net neutrality rules,” Andrus Ansip, the European Commission’s vice president for the digital single market, said on Tuesday in a statement. “They have been heard.”

Many of the rules approved on Tuesday were opposed vigorously by carriers like Vodafone of Britain and Deutsche Telekom of Germany. They have warned that if their ability to charge extra for international roaming - a major source of revenue - is curtailed, they might not be able to invest in the region’s mobile and broadband infrastructure. Europeans now pay $38 for a monthly cellphone contract, or roughly half of what the typical American pays, according to GSMA, an industry group.

Mobile and broadband operators have also lobbied to charge Web services for premium access to their networks. Telecom operators appeared to have more success on that front because the rules could allow them to charge content companies like Netflix, the video service, to get their videos to consumers at a higher speed. Such charges are not allowed under the open Internet rules approved by federal regulators in the United States this year.

Although policymakers in Europe on Tuesday described the guidelines as a version of net neutrality, consumer groups said the potential ability to charge for faster access was a big loophole. The Internet service rules could still be altered by national regulators or face legal challenges.

“With rules protecting access to the Internet and others handing over the future of the Internet to telcos, it will be up to courts to decide whose interests prevail,” said Estelle Massé of Access, a consumer group based in Brussels, referring to telecommunications companies.

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Still, analysts said, the reduction of cellphone roaming charges is likely to have the most immediate effect on consumers.

As part of the new rules announced on Tuesday, international cellphone roaming charges will be reduced in April 2016, and then fully banned in June 2017, according to a statement from the European Commission.

Beginning on April 30, 2016, telecom operators will not be able to charge more than 5 euro cents, or 5.5 cents, a minute to people with European mobile service who make calls while in other European Union countries. There will also be a maximum charge of 2 euro cents to send text messages and 5 euro cents for every megabyte of data downloaded.

“This is a great success for the European Union,” Anrijs Matiss, transportation minister for Latvia, which led the negotiations between the European Commission, the European Parliament and member states, said in a statement.

To limit the concerns of mobile wireless providers, European policymakers included a “fair use” policy. The policy is intended to stop individuals from buying an inexpensive cellphone subscription in one European country to use it in another where cellphone costs are higher.

Partly in anticipation of these rules, a number of the region’s carriers have spent billions of dollars during the last 18 months in a new round of consolidation. The goal is to offer voice, text and Internet mobile services across multiple countries to respond to people’s growing appetite to surf the Web on the go.

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“We share the view that an ambitious reform of the electronic communication rules is needed to boost Europe’s digital economy and job creation potential,” Steven Tas, chairman of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association, a trade body, said in a statement on Tuesday.

The rules approved on Tuesday come after more than two years of lengthy negotiations during which other overhauls, including how wireless spectrum needed for high-speed mobile services is doled out to companies, were removed from the list. Many national governments balked at those changes, saying that control of domestic airwaves was a national issue, not a European one.

Eventually, European governments agreed to a set of pared-down rules with both the European Commission and the European Parliament.

European policymakers’ attention has already turned toward new legislation - called the Digital Single Market - that was announced in May and is aimed at creating a Pan-European market from digital services like e-commerce.

This next step, which is expected to take years to complete, also involves a number of investigations into the dominant role played by U.S. tech giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook over how Europeans access the Internet.

--2015 New York Times News Service