Europe - mobile data and Internet

Commissioner Viviane Reding on Data Roaming

"What we want to achieve is simple: Sending text messages or downloading other data via a mobile phone while being in another EU country should not be substantially more expensive for a consumer than sending text messages or downloading data at home. This is the logic of the borderless single market which we in Europe already agreed to create 50 years ago. Consumers should feel at ease when sending an SMS from the beaches of Spain or when skiing in the mountains of Austria. And business customers should be able to use data communications in the EU like their competitors are doing in the single market of the United States. Higher roaming charges abroad must be justified by additional costs of operators, or they will have to disappear."

(08/02/2008) "I have no appetite at all for regulating again. But to avoid regulation, the industry will have to show its responsiveness to consumer concerns by credible reductions of the cost for data roaming both at the wholesale and at the retail level and by transparent offers compatible with the spirit of the single market. The market situation on 1 July 2008 will be decisive for whether regulation will be necessary or not."