International roaming refers to the ability to use your mobile phone when abroad on holiday or on business. Because your home network operator does not provide service in the country in which you are travelling, when you make or receive a call abroad, you are using the network of an operator in that country, i.e. you are ?roaming' on the foreign network. For providing this service, the foreign network operator will charge a wholesale rate to your home operator who will, in turn, charge you a retail rate.
In many cases, international roaming charges are very high and ? as recently noted by the European Regulators Group (ERG), a body established by the Commission to advise on the regulation of markets for electronic communications ? often without clear justification.
In general, international roaming charges are much more expensive than normal domestic charges. There can also be significant variations in the retail charges. The European Commission acknowledges that some operators also offer special international roaming packages and that this was a signal of first movements in the markets.
There is no doubt that high roaming charges are a great problem for all European Union (EU), as nowadays we cannot imagine our lives without a mobile phone. In this work I will show how the Commission made influence to the changes of high roaming charges in EU, what steps were made for that and how this problem was solved.
1. First steps to regulation of roaming charges in EU
In 2004 it was decided to start investigating roaming charges in EU. Mobile telephone network operators across the EU have been sent a questionnaire as part of an investigation into wholesale prices for "i ...