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EU to cap wholesale roaming charges

Xinhua, February 2, 2017 Adjust font size:

Representatives of the European Parliament, the European Council and the European Commission on Tuesday night agreed to cap the wholesale roaming charges.

Wholesale price cap is how much telecoms operators can charge each other when customers use their mobile phones abroad.

According to a statement released Wednesday by the European Commission, the negotiators agreed that the wholesale caps for making phone calls will fall to 3.2 cents (euro) per minute and the caps for sending text messages will fall to 1 cent per SMS.

As to the wholesale data caps, they will gradually decrease over 5 years from 7.7 euros (8.3 U.S. dollars) per GB as of June 15, 2017 to 2.5 euros per GB as of Jan. 1, 2022, it said.

This agreement was a significant step towards the end of retail roaming surcharges on June 15, 2017 which enables customers of the European Union (EU) to use their mobile phones in other EU member states at the same price they pay at home.

So far, customers of the bloc have to pay high surcharges to make roaming calls when visiting or working in other member states.

The agreement still needs to be approved by the full Parliament and all member states before entering into force, said the EU statement. Endit