Has the EU given up on abolition of roaming charges?

Neelie Kroes, the vice-president for the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, has been at the forefront of telecommunications regulation. She has spearheaded the reduction in roaming costs for mobile users in the EU and more recently she had begun a campaign to abolish roaming charges altogether by 2015 but according to new information seen by Reuters she may have now abandoned some of what she sought.

According to Reuters

Kroes proposed a cap of 3 cents per minute for voice calls from July, 2014 to June 2022, a 70 percent reduction from the 10 cent cap which came into effect in July this year. She also wanted to slash the wholesale cap for data to 1.5 cents per megabyte from the current limit of 15 cents.

But the latest draft of the legislation makes no reference to the above. This appears to be  a major climb down from the original draft legislation but her chief spokesman Ryan Heath said: “We’ve made several technical improvements over the summer that will help us reach our ongoing objective of a real telecoms single market.”

Kroes has denied that this is a climbdown stating:

@alexanderhanff roaming fees will still end – debate is over how, not whether.

— Neelie Kroes (@NeelieKroesEU) August 29, 2013

Kroes is due to unveil her proposals by September 10th so we’ll no more then as to how much the proposed legislation has been watered down but the fighting talk of the abolition of roaming charges has certainly changed somewhat.