The EU yesterday reached a preliminary deal to abolish mobile roaming charges across the 28-country bloc by June 2017 and to require telecom operators to treat all Internet traffic equally.
The draft agreement marks an important step in the EU’s plan to overhaul the continent’s digital market to boost growth and catch up with the US and Asia.
“Under the agreement, roaming surcharges in the European Union will be abolished as of June 15, 2017,” Latvia, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said in a statement after 12 hours of talks among EU lawmakers.
The deal will require approval from the European Parliament and EU member states, some of whom have been pushing for roaming charges to be abolished in December 2018.
Eastern European countries have feared that operators might hike domestic prices if roaming charges are removed prematurely, while countries with a lot of tourists, such as Spain and Greece, have benefited from higher prices.
The delay has angered consumer rights groups who say member states are defending the interests of their national operators.
In an interim move, roaming charges will drop in April next year, with maximum surcharges of 0.05 euros per minute of a call or megabyte of data and 0.02 euros per text sent.
That will make the maximum roaming charge about 75 percent cheaper than under current tariff caps, the European Commission said.
The commission has been setting caps on roaming prices since 2007 and says that retail prices for cross-border calls, texts and data have fallen by more than 80 percent and for data by up to 91 percent.
On the issue of net neutrality, the EU plans to order telecom operators to treat all Internet traffic equally and that blocking would only be allowed for clear reasons, such as countercyberattacks or child pornography.
Companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telecom Italia had lobbied to have more leeway to tap into a potentially lucrative source of revenue, but Internet activists say this could create a two-speed Internet that benefits companies with deep pockets.
The rules could benefit start-ups that showcase their business or sell on the Internet and need to be able to compete on an equal footing with larger players. The latter would not be able to pay for privileged access to end users.
“The access to a start-up’s Web site will not be unfairly slowed down to make way for bigger companies. No service will be stuck because it does not pay an additional fee to Internet service providers. There won’t be gatekeepers to decide what you can and cannot access,” the commission said.
The common EU-wide Internet rules are to enter into force in all 28 members on April 30 next year.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
RSS