European Commission on Tuesday announced that there will be no data roaming charges within the European Union by June 2017.
During a 14-month interim period from April 2016,, telecom operators can add surcharges at reduced rate.
Surcharge
€0.05 (3.5p) extra per minute for calls
€0.02 extra per SMS sent
€0.05 extra per megabyte of data used
The European Commission said mobile users can benefit from 75 percent cut in roaming charges within the EU during the interim period.
Net neutrality in EU
Following the footsteps of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), EU Commission is also guiding the telecoms to avoid favoring some type of Internet services.
Though telecom operators in EU need to treat most internet traffic equally, the net neutrality rules will allow them to favor some services such as internet TVs.
Recently, the US has adopted net neutrality guidelines – supported by President Barack Obama and a slew of content providers including Netflix.
As per the net neutrality guidelines in the European Union, internet service providers (ISPs) cannot favor some internet traffic.
However, ISPs will be able to favor services that require high-quality internet connections, such as internet TVs, as long as they do not impinge on the overall quality of internet traffic, BBC reported today.
The commission said telecoms would also be able to throttle traffic if it was in the public interest to do so.
editor@telecomlead.com
