Press Releases

EU Roaming Prices Down 22% Since Last Year

GSMA expects competition to deliver further reductions

30^th October 2006 - London: The average price for making and receiving a mobile phone call when roaming within Europe has fallen by 22% since 2005, according to a new retail price index compiled by leading consultancy AT Kearney.

The index shows the average price of making and receiving a call while roaming away from home has fallen to 65 Euro cents per minute (or 2.6 Euros for a four-minute call) from 83 Euro cents per minute in 2005. Facilitated by the GSM Association, the global trade association for mobile phone operators, AT Kearney calculated the average price per minute using July and August 2006 data supplied by mobile operator groups with 234 million customers across 19 European countries.

"This summer, roamers paid substantially less to make and receive calls than they did in 2005 and we believe roaming tariffs will carry on falling," said Tom Phillips, Chief Government & Regulatory Affairs Officer of the GSM Association. "The European mobile market is highly competitive and competition continues to drive lower prices and innovative tariff packages. However, the rigid roaming regulation proposed by the European Commission would stifle operators' efforts to tailor new tariff packages to meet the needs of different customer groups and mobile users could be left worse off."

Many of Europe's leading mobile operators have launched tariff packages with discounted roaming rates aimed at regular travellers. Some of these packages, which offer lower per minute rates in return for a connection charge or fixed monthly fee, would be outlawed by the Commission's proposed regulation.

The GSMA plans to publish regular updates to the retail price index, which complements its roaming price comparison Web site (http://www.roaming.gsmeurope.org/) which allows consumers to easily compare the roaming tariffs offered by individual operators .

About GSM Europe
GSM Europe is the European interest group of the GSM Association. GSM Europe represents around 147 operators in 50 countries/areas in Europe and counts around 600 million subscribers.

For further information contact:

David Pringle
GSM Association
Tel: +44 795 755 6069
Email:press@gsm.org