EU Commissioner: Net Neutrality and end to roaming charges

You may not have heard of her but Neelie Kroes is your best friend. She has been at the forefront of the EU’s campaign to drive down communications costs and protect consumers rights. As the vice-president for the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda she has spear headed a number of campaigns to bring down roaming costs including cutting the previously extortionate costs for mobile data and introducing roaming caps and eliminating the costs for receiving calls while roaming in the EU.

She is now turning her sights on eliminating roaming charges all for mobile users altogether. She sees that the current roaming costs are completely against the spirit and the rules of the single market and she wants “consumers to take advantage of a borderless market”.

Something else she’s been working towards for sometime is net neutrality. Currently your ISP can dictate how you use your data. they can limit tethering, they can stop you using VoIP services like Skype and charge you a premium to use either of these services. She wants to stop this. If her plans come through she hopes to bring the legislation covering roaming and net neutrality to the leaders of the countries of the EU and have them sign off on it by October 2013 and then hopefully with commission and EU parliament approval by mid 2014. If all goes well the laws could be in place by early 2015. It may seem a long time but there will be substantial lobbying by vested interests to get this stopped. Tweet her your support and write to your local EU elected representative This is going to be a serious and long fight! Her full speech (which is very interesting) is here: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-13-484_en.htm