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ECTA supports "roaming charges too high" initiative

Viviane Reding, EC commissioner, has been running a one-woman campaign against mobile phone call prices for several years; her latest mission is to cut roaming. Today, she got support from ECTA, which calls "termination charges" excessive, and discriminatory.

The European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) looks after the regulatory and commercial interests of new entrant telecoms operators, ISPs and suppliers of products and services to the communications industry.

Today the group claimed that "lucrative wholesale charges imposed by incumbent mobile operators for connecting calls to each other’s networks are both excessive and discriminatory. As a result, European consumers are being penalised."

In an official release, the pro-competition group called on Commissioner Reding to enforce a cut in these charges when she publishes her proposals on termination rates later this month. It's encouragement Reding hardly needs.

Currently, reports ECTA, the average EU mobile termination rate is nine euro cents a minute, although rates between member states and between networks vary significantly. It said:

Commissioner Reding said earlier this month that she wants to see mobile termination rates cut to between one and two euro cents by 2012. ECTA agrees that a significant decrease is needed.

 The reference - to an April 16 interview in the Financial Times - included a suggestion that American-style charging might be adopted - where the receiver pays. Reding said "The whole market is developing, so we should not stay on the rules that have been in place 10 years." Suggestions were made that such amove could position Europe closer to the model followed in the USA - which while it has some of the lowest calling rates around, also has a much lower population penetration level, commented Cellular News. The suggestion would appear to contain its own refutation - the idea that European telcos would adopt a model which reduces overall mobile traffic would require some digestion. As Innocenzo Genna, Chairman of ECTA, responded: 

European customers currently do not pay for receiving calls, but making calls is much more expensive than making and receiving calls taken together in the US. That is partly why in the US on average customers makes eight times as many mobile calls as in Germany, for example.

ECTA claims the current mobile termination charges are excessive, making it expensive for customers to call other networks. It argues

These rates are not based on costs; and importantly, that they distort competition as they allow big operators to offer their large customer bases calls within their networks that do not attract termination charges, making it difficult for smaller, fixed and mobile new entrant operators to compete.

Evidence of mobile termination rates being much higher thn their actual cost was revealed in an Italian antitrust procedure against Telecom Italia Mobile last year, observed ECTA.

An internal report on regulatory activities stated that they were successful in maintaining their mobile termination rates ‘abundantly higher’ than the real costs of termination, as a result of which Telecom Italia Mobile preserved one of its major revenue sources.

Innocenzo Genna said: "Customers have for years faced excessive prices because of the very high termination rates being charged when they make calls to mobile numbers. Our estimate is that over the last ten years, across the 27 EU countries, this amounts to a total in excess of €100bn of consumers’ money. The cost of termination is totally disproportionate to the costs incurred: mobile termination retail rates are on average 9-10 times higher than fixed termination rates. They also vary greatly – between two to 18 euro cents – despite very similar cost levels."

Genna added:"ECTA’s position is that all termination rates should be based on cost and currently they quite evidently are not. The large differences between on-net and off-net prices – on-net prices often are for free or very cheap – suggest that incumbent mobile operators’ costs are significantly less than their actual termination fee, since the cost of receiving a call from the same network or from another network is the same."