The European Commission launched a website yesterday dedicated to helping consumers find the cheapest "roaming" tariffs when they use their mobile abroad.
It also renewed its criticism of the mobile phone industry, which it accuses of charging too much to consumers for roaming and not offering transparent pricing.
Roaming tariffs are the fees that mobile phone operators charge consumers when they make or receive calls when travelling abroad. The fees are agreed between a consumer's own mobile operator and the mobile network that they use abroad.
The new website shows that roaming charges vary significantly across member states. For example, a four-minute call by a Belgian mobile user in Cyprus costs €10, while a British customer making a four minute call in Spain is charged €4.96.
The portion of the website dealing with Irish roaming charges notes that tariffs vary considerably depending on the operator customers choose to roam with while travelling abroad.
For example, a Meteor customer pays €1.92 for a four-minute call with one Finnish mobile firm and €4.44 roaming with another.
The new website is available at http://europa.eu.int/ information_society/roaming.
The commissioner for the information society, Viviane Reding, said there were signs that competition was developing in the market, but that these were not yet satisfactory.
She said that, if self-regulation of the market did not work, the commission would have to take other measures. She said it would take another look at the market in six months. The commission has been investigating the high cost of roaming since launching an anti-trust suit against mobile operators in Britain and Germany in 2000.
It is still pursuing these cases, which involve Vodafone and O2, and recently began an investigation into two new European-wide roaming alliances agreed in the EU by different mobile operators called Starmap and Freemove. It is investigating the alliances to ensure that they comply with EU rules on restrictive business practices.
Some mobile operators, particularly those in Greece, did not co-operate with the commission for the survey, despite an agreement with the GSM industry body to do so. As a result, some of the tariffs for these operators are not available on the website.
There are no roaming fees yet available for the new mobile operator in the Irish market, 3.
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