In its plenary session in Strasbourg, the European Parliament recently voted in favour of an EU regulation to reduce mobile roaming charges. This EU Regulation, which the European Commission proposed on 12th of July last year, was largely supported by representatives of the 27 EU Member States.

The Council of Ministers of the European Union responded favourably to this initiative of EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding as the high prices that mobile users pay for the roaming service have been identified as a persistent problem by consumer organisations, regulators and policy makers across the Community. While a range of measures by regulators as well as by the various operators has been taken in recent years to address this issue under the existing legal framework, these have not proved effective enough in reducing prices to a level that reflects the underlying costs of providing the services concerned. Therefore, it was broadly agreed that legal intervention was necessary in order to bring the roaming charges down to a moderate level to strike a balance between the consumer's interests while at the same time allowing the market players a fair return on their investment.

During the extended period of consultations and debate over the past few months, Malta always emphasized the importance of transparency to ensure that the consumer has the right tools to be able to check the tariff structure wherever and whenever needed and to compare the rates and payment packages of different service providers.

During the Informal Telecommunications Ministerial Meeting in Hanover last March, when referring to Malta’s case in particular, I addressed the Council and stated the importance of ensuring that small and micro operators are clearly and specifically given due importance in all economic and technical considerations.

In Malta, both operators have developed schemes aimed at reducing the cost of roaming, and more importantly to allow callers to be able to determine how much a call will cost. Operators appear to be recognising that pricing strategies which are prohibitive may in the long run be of detriment to the market players themselves, as they limit the growth of a potentially very lucrative market.

The legislative framework that has to move in tandem with the market and needs to be adapted in order to reflect constantly changing realities. This is truly the case as less then two years after the adoption of our current framework, we are already looking at changes that need to be made to this regime to enable it to take us through to 2010 and beyond.