BRUSSELS – The European Commission has unveiled the draft of a plan to force down termination fees for calls to mobile phones opening up the plan to a two-month consultation with the European Union’s telecommunications industry.
“Call termination markets in the E.U. need a regulatory plumber. Over the next three years, I expect greater consistency and coordination to bring the costs for mobile phone calls down by around 70 per cent from the current level,” the E.U.’s telecommunications commissioner Viviane Reding said in a statement last week.
Phone companies charge each other termination fees for the task of accepting calls from one operator’s network to another’s. The rates vary widely across the E.U.: termination fees for calls to mobiles range from