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Roaming Outside the European Union May Generate Much Higher Costs than Within the Community

28.07.2014

 

The National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications of Romania (ANCOM) advises Romanian mobile telephony and internet users travelling abroad, especially outside the European Union, to read carefully the providers’ offers, the voice and data tariffs charged outside the regulated area being sometimes even 50 times higher than the tariffs paid for the same services in the EU countries.

According to the data available on www.veritel.ro, a Romanian user travelling in Serbia, Montenegro, Egypt, Morocco, Canada, the U.S.A. or in the U.A.E. (Dubai) may pay more than EUR 2/minute for a call to Romania or even more than EUR 1/minute for receiving a roaming call. Comparatively, a user travelling within the EU pays maximum EUR 0.19/minute (VAT excluded) for a call to any destination within the EU and maximum EUR 0.05/minute (VAT excluded) for a received call, when the standard tariff plan (Eurotariff) is used.
As for data services, a Romanian mobile internet user on the standard tariffs who travels, for example, to Turkey, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia or to the U.S.A. pays standard data transfer tariffs starting from EUR 5/MB, whereas such costs may exceed EUR 10/MB for destinations such as Egypt, Morocco, Thailand or Tunisia or even 13 Euro/MB for Australia, Brazil or Japan. In comparison, Romanian users travelling in EU countries pay maximum EUR 0.20/MB (VAT excluded), when using the standard tariff plan (Eurotariff). For example, a user accessing the e-mail, social networks or news websites from the mobile telephone, for approximately 2 hours, may achieve at least 15MB traffic, and thus pay even 65 times more on data roaming outside the EU than within the Community.
In order to avoid the shock of the huge bills that may result from the usage of data services, Romanian users travelling abroad are warned by SMS, e-mails or pop-up windows when the cost of downloaded data nears or exceeds the pre-set EUR 50 limit. Nevertheless, the users may request the operator to set another limit, above or below EUR 50.
The big difference between the costs paid by mobile telephony and internet users for the roaming services within the EU and those outside this area are generated by the regulations in force. Thus, while the Community area enjoys regulations regarding the maximum tariff the operators can charge within the standard tariff plan, the non-EU countries have no such maximum ceiling, each operator being free to charge the applicable tariffs.
Before departure, ANCOM recommends the users to get thoroughly informed on the special roaming offers made available by the operators during holiday periods, in order to choose the tariff plan which is best suited to their communication needs. For a free of charge comparison of the internet and telephony tariffs currently available on the market, the users may access www.veritel.ro, the online application for comparing telecom offers created by ANCOM.
Concerning the usage degree of roaming services, the Romanian users who accessed the mobile internet service in the EU/EEA area in the third quarter of 2013 (July-August-September), based on the Eurotariff, consumed more than 10 million MB, while the users who travelled outside this area consumed 1 million MB. During the same period, the Romanian users who travelled within the EU/EEA performed 29 million minutes of roaming calls and received 93 million minutes, whereas those who travelled outside the EU/EEA performed calls totalling 3 million minutes and received 3.7 million minutes.
Further information on the usage and costs of the roaming service are available on the Authority’s website, here.