Final talks to commence on EU telecoms market reforms

The Latvian presidency of the Council of Ministers was given a mandate to open the final phase of negotiations with the European Parliament on a new EU telecoms regulation in a vote of national government officials last week.

The Council's position on the reform of roaming charges is that a "new pricing mechanism" should be established to lower the cost of downloading data for EU citizens when they travel abroad to another EU country.

"Within certain limits to be determined, consumers could make and receive calls, send SMSs and use data services without paying anything extra on top of the domestic fee," the Council said in a statement. "Once this basic roaming allowance is used up, the operator may charge a fee, but this fee will be much lower than current charges."

"In the case of calls made, SMSs sent and data used, the roaming fee could not in any case be higher than the maximum wholesale rate that operators pay for using the networks of other member states. For calls received, the maximum surcharge will be the weighted average of maximum mobile termination rates across the EU," it said.

The Council's proposals run contrary to plans previously backed by MEPs. The European Parliament voted last year to support the abolition of roaming charges by 15 December 2015 other than in exceptional cases, as part of the telecoms market reforms.

Under the Council's plans, the European Commission would be asked by the middle of 2018 to review if "further measures" are needed to help phase out roaming charges, with new legislative to "address the situation" a possible outcome of that review.

The Council's proposals also set out its approach to net neutrality. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) will deliver all content requested by a customer equally, not allowing content producers to have preferential access to subscribers.

Under the Council's proposals, ISPs would be free to engage in "traffic management" in certain circumstances.

"Blocking or slowing down specific content or applications will be prohibited, with only a limited number of exceptions and only for as long as it is necessary," the Council said. "For instance, customers may request their operator to block spam. Blocking could also be necessary to prevent cyber attacks through rapidly spreading malware."

ISPs and content providers would be free, under the Council's proposals, to agree commercial deals that guarantee "a specific level of quality" of service by the ISPs in delivering its commercial partner's content to internet users. However, ISPs would at the same time be required to ensure that its special treatment of that content did not prevent it from delivering basic internet services to other consumers.

It is the current intention that the new telecoms regulation would apply from 30 June 2016.

"The presidency will negotiate the terms of the regulation with the European Parliament on behalf of the Council," the Council said. "In order to be adopted, the legal act must be approved by both institutions. The Parliament adopted its position … in April 2014."