“Crucial”, according Andrus Ansip, EU Commissione Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, is the agreement reached during the night of June 30^th in the chambers of power in Brussels, aimed at abolishing the practice of data roaming, in force by June of 2017 in twenty-eight member countries. “European citizens have been heard” that “they asked and waited for the end of the extra costs of roaming as well as the rules on the Internet neutrality” he said. Following more than a year and a half of negotiations, between the threads and the interests of the powerful lobby of telecommunications companies, it seems then to have been untied the knot that is “essential for consumers and businesses in Europe digital economy and society”, as the Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said.

 

Well, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission reached a preliminary agreement with a view to gradually remove roaming and costs generated by mobile phone. The roaming data is the mechanism that snaps when your telephone company is not able to independently cover the area, for which the device rests in networks of other mobile operators. The costs of international roaming, especially in the past, were quite high.

 

Starting from June 15^th, 2017 European citizens then will be able to move to the community space and use their mobile device, according to paying the same rates applied in their State of origin. This means that if the citizen pays in his country a service plan that includes a monthly amount of call minutes, SMSs and gigabytes for navigation data, in another country of European Union minutes, SMSs and data used fot the connection will be deducted, at no additional cost, by the same subscription.

 

The agreement on the abolition of roaming data provides also a safeguard clause for the so-called fair use, in order to prevent potential abuses. So that the companies will be allowed to charge the extra cost, if the use of the SIM card is not limited to short periods. You can not use in the State of residence a SIM card bought in another EU country, where domestic prices are lower than those of your country of origin. Or likewise you can not use the subscription purchased in the State of origin, if you have permanent residence in a foreign country. Then it will be a national regulation to specifically set out the threshold beyond which the extra cost will be reintroduced.

 

Always with the aim of promoting the development of a digital single market, the European agreement of June 30^th on data roaming, intervenes then also in the dissolution of the node unsolved until now in the old continent, about the net neutrality. It has been resolved that all traffic data traveling online shall be treated by Internet providers without discrimination or blocks operated on the type of content.