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The EU boasts about having reduced your roaming charges and Europhiles market this like a crowning achievement, unsurprisingly it found it’s way into the government’s leaflet (which I will discuss in more detail in upcoming posts) While it is clearly patronising to believe people would give up on our status as a nation state in exchange for cheaper phone calls, this is in any case an example of the EU taking credit for a global initiative. Once again the EU, and our obsession with it, obscures the international stage from view. It’s that naval gazing mindset at work.
Why is that Safaricom are doing exactly the same thing, almost a year ahead of the EU, and China is following suit along with the Gulf States? It’s because this is a global convention being put into practice, driven by global bodies such the OECD and ITU. It could and should have happened a lot sooner but for the delays introduced by the EU.
if there is any single group that can take the credit for forcing changes, it is an obscure organisation that calls itself the International Telephone Users Group (INTUG). Founded in 1974, a year after the UK joined the then EEC, it is an international association of business users of telecommunications with members and contacts in all five continents and thus claims a global presence.
In turn, this triggered an investigation by the European Commission, DG competition, which reported in December 2000. At this stage, though, the EU intervention was distinctly weak, arguing mainly for improved transparency, with the publication of charges by operators in order to increase public pressure for change.
By then, INTUG has also involved the OECD, making a presentation to its Working Party on Telecommunication and Information Service Policies. “In its early days a little overpricing or cross-subsidy was acceptable while operators were becoming established”, it said, then declaring: “That has long since ceased to be acceptable. Users will not tolerate it and will do whatever is necessary to bring to an end the existing oligopolies and market structures”.
Interestingly, in July 2000, even the BBC had acknowledged the role of INTUG, reporting that the [1999] Intug report had “prompted the EU to look into roaming charges”. The then state of the art can be seen from this report.
By 2004, things were warming up, with the European Regulators Group (ERG), made up from EU member state regulators, sending a questionnaire to all network operators asking them to detail their roaming charges.
By 2007, though, EU action was still painfully slow, with regulations calling for price transparency and setting up maximum tariffs for wholesale prices. Two years later, we then see a major report from the OECD, finding that roaming rates were “excessive” when compared to the underlying wholesale costs of providing the roaming service or the retail price of a domestic mobile call plus an international call from the fixed network.
Then, a year later in 2010, the OECD published its policy recommendations, which put the move to reduce roaming charges on a truly international footing, also pulling in the WTO as part of a globally co-ordinated initiative.
By 2008, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) had become involved, producing a comprehensive report comprising a “Regulatory analysis of international mobile roaming services”. To this day, the ITU remains a major player, with its Let’s roam the world initiative.
In 2013, effectively it was all over, with the OECD invoking WTO provisions, stating that “international mobile roaming services are believed to fall under the scope of these provisions” and “more clearly so under section 5 a) of the Annex on Telecommunications”.
EU or no, the writing was on the wall. We saw in 2013, India committing to removing roaming charges. African countries followed, alongside Latin America. ASEAN members are set to do likewise. In the United States and the Caribbean, things are also moving in the right direction.
As for the EU, it has been slow to the point of hesitant, its actions marked down as unambitious. Its claim to be looking after consumer interests is hollow, representing nothing more than them taking credit for an unstoppable movement that was going to happen anyway.
In this case, as in many others, the EU is a redundant middleman that slows down global progress – and it even has the nerve to even take credit for such achievements.
This post was originally published by the author 10 April 2016. https://thescepticisle.com/2016/04/10/the-abolition-of-roaming-charges-a-global-initative/
