PRESS RELEASE: Roaming campaign: €7 for an email!

Europeans for Fair Roaming (www.fairroaming.org), the network of citizens and organisations fighting against unfairly high roaming charges in the European Union welcomes the new EU proposals for bringing down roaming charges over the next years but is convicted that the proposed price caps for data roaming at 90ct/MB to 50ct/MB and the cap for receiving calls at 10ct/minute are still too high.

Campaign coordinator Bengt Beier stated: “The new proposals by the European Commission are a great step forward. The European Commission has taken up many of the proposals we have been making, especially to strengthen market forces to bring down prices: the ability to decouple roaming services from domestic services and easier market access for small and virtual operators. But the proposed price caps for data roaming are still far too high to effectively save customers from ‘bill shocks’. At 90ct per MB, receiving a single e-mail with photos could still cost you up to 7€! We also believe that there should be a goal to make the receiving of calls free. We still hope that the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers will co-operate to make sure the new rules are passed without delay and will ensure to improve the price caps for data roaming.”