LONDON—Vodafone Group plc and T-Mobile International’s UK subsidiary announced plans to substantially reduce their European roaming rates, which have been under pressure from European Union regulators who want to reduce rates for consumers and are threatening to do it by regulating wholesale roaming rates.
Both Vodafone and T-Mobile received formal objections to their roaming rates from EU regulators. Further, the EU is conducting ongoing investigations into various operators’ justifications for international roaming rates.
Vodafone said it would address both consumer and wholesale roaming rates. The operator said that by next April it would cut its average European roaming rate by at least 40 percent compared with last summer; average rates would fall from more than $1.14 per minute to about 70 cents per minute. Vodafone also said it would enter into reciprocal roaming agreements with any other European operator for calls within the EU at a price of about 57 cents per minute beginning in October, so long as the other operator would agree to the same roaming price.
Vodafone launched its Vodafone Passport service in 2005, which allows subscribers to take their home calling plan abroad for a per-call connection fee. Vodafone said that as of this month more than 6 million people were using its Passport service and an additional 100,000 customers were signing up each week. The operator estimated that the new international calling rates would benefit more than 30 million of its customers who roam each year.
T-Mobile UK is moving into the game much faster. As of June 1, the operator said, it plans to reduce its roaming rates to a flat rate of about 70 cents per minute for roaming in 29 European countries, the U.S. and Canada. According to the operator, this is a drop of about 45 percent from its current prepaid European rates and 54 percent from its North American prepaid rates. The rates cover both prepaid and postpaid customers.
“We have not needed regulation to encourage us to cut roaming costs,” said Jim Hyde, managing director of T-Mobile UK. “True mobility means affordable mobility and at present, too many mobile customers just don’t use their phones abroad. That makes no sense for customers and no sense for us.”
The company noted that it is making the rates available “despite not being able to agree in all cases [to] reduced international wholesale rates with all the many operators with which interconnect is needed to make roaming possible.”
