Implementing regulation 2016/2286 - Detailed rules on the application of fair use policy and on the methodology for assessing the sustainability of the abolition of retail roaming surcharges and on the application to be submitted by a roaming provider for the purposes of that assessment - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 344/46

Pursuant to Regulation (EU) No 531/2012, roaming providers should not levy any surcharge additional to the domestic retail price on roaming customers in any Member State, for any regulated roaming call made or received, any regulated roaming SMS message sent or any regulated data roaming service used, including MMS messages, subject to a ‘fair use policy’. This provision applies from 15 June 2017, provided that the legislative act to be adopted further to the proposal on the wholesale roaming market referred to in Article 19(2) of that Regulation has become applicable by that date.

Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 provides that in specific and exceptional circumstances a roaming provider may apply to its national regulatory authority for an authorisation to apply a surcharge on its roaming customers. Any such request for authorisation is to be accompanied by all the information necessary to demonstrate that, in the absence of any retail roaming surcharges, the provider is unable to recover its costs of providing regulated retail roaming services, so that the sustainability of its domestic charging model is undermined.

In order to ensure a consistent application across the Union of any policy which aims at preventing abusive or anomalous usage of roaming services (‘fair use policy’) and of authorisations to apply a surcharge, it is necessary to lay down detailed rules on the application of such fair use policy and on the methodology for assessing the sustainability of the abolition of retail roaming surcharges and on the application to be submitted by a roaming provider for the purposes of that assessment.

According to Regulation (EU) No 531/2012, the objective of a fair use policy is to prevent abusive or anomalous usage by roaming customers of regulated retail roaming services at the applicable domestic price, such as the use of such services for purposes other than periodic travel, for instance the use of such services on a permanent basis. The implementing measures should ensure that the possibility to apply a roaming fair use policy to pursue this objective is not exploited by roaming providers for other purposes, to the detriment of roaming customers engaged in any form of periodic travel.

With the abolition of retail roaming surcharges in the Union, the same tariff conditions apply for the use of mobile services while roaming abroad in the Union and at home (i.e. in the country of the mobile subscription of the customer). Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 aims at eliminating divergences between domestic prices and those applied to roaming when periodically travelling within the Union, leading to the realisation of ‘roaming like at home’. However, its rules are not meant to enable permanent roaming across the Union, i.e. the situation where a customer in a Member State where domestic mobile prices are higher buys services from operators established in Member States where domestic mobile prices are lower, and in which the customer...