I refer to Roberta Metsola’s article entitled “Your right to roam. Your rights online. Your rights to your data.”

In this article, Roberta Metsola writes: “The European Commission has only just proposed a new telecommunications package which, among other things, aims to provide incentives that will push companies to end outrageous mobile phone roaming charges across the European Union once and for all. I will continue to work hard to see that cross border roaming charges no longer remain artificially high and this barrier to a proper functioning single market is finally brought down. Europe is lagging even further behind when it comes to embracing new mobile technology. The new availability and usage of 4G technology in Europe is woeful when compared to the United States, Japan and Korea.”

Up until 2011, I had worked for over 10 years in the mobile telecommunications industry with my specialization being international mobile roaming. This sector was a lucrative business, especially for southern European countries, which tend to receive more foreign visitors than actually having their residents travelling abroad.

Following the EU's massive campaign against mobile roaming charges and the heavy-handed price regulation that followed, the revenues from this business dried up completely. This, coupled with a reduction in termination charges, obviously led to a heavy reduction in profitability for European telecommunication operators.

As we all know, investment follows profit. So since regulation has dried up the profits for Europe telecommunication operators, the investment for new technologies also dried up, leaving Europe lagging behind in 4G. This when in the past, prior to the EU's price regulation on mobile roaming charges and termination charges, European operators where among the forerunners of new technologies like 3G, surely very much ahead of operators in the USA for example.

On the other hand, telecommunication operators in non-European countries like USA and Japan did not face such heavy-handed price regulation, meaning that healthy level of profits permitted a healthy level of investment in new technologies.

As always, politicians look for short-terms gains to help them become more popular at the sacrifice of long-term strategic goals. The EU Commission and EU Parliament have blown the trumpet of reducing mobile roaming charges for years now, citing this as an example of how EU institutions are doing something for their citizens, in the hope that European citizens change their overriding perception that these extremely expensive EU institutions are ineffective in improving things where it really matters.

So if Europe is falling behind in the level of investment on new telecommunication technologies, it is purely thanks to the past populist decisions taken by EU politicians!

Silvan Mifsud