Monday 11 February 2008, 2:44 PM

Mobile operators respond to EC ticking off

Posted by andrewdonoghue

This just in from the GSMA - the organisation that represents mobile operators. The organisation's Mobile World Congress conference is in full swing in Barcelona and amid all the talk of new platforms and paradigm shifts, the EC's competition commissioner Viviane Reding decided to crash the party with a press conference given on the steps of the show about how operators are punishing mobile users with data roaming charges.

The EC is going to take action to force operators to offer fairer charges, she claimed.

"What I want to achieve is very simple - that sending a text message or downloading other data via a mobile phone while in another EU country should not be substantially more expensive for a consumer than sending a text message or downloading data at home." (story courtesy of our colleagues at Silicon.com)

The GSMA has just responded with a statement in which they claim "regulation is not the answer". (Actually they are probably right - the answer here is clearly taking a big stick and all the chief execs concerned until they stop ripping off customers with ridiculous charges.)

Anyway - here's that statement in full:

Many mobile operators are lowering the price of their data roaming services and the market for these services is growing rapidly.

Overall, data from the European Regulators Group shows that there was a fall of as much as 10% between the second quarter and third quarter of 2007 alone – a sharp decline in just one quarter. The GSMA believes average prices have fallen further since then and competitive forces will drive further reductions.

Any move to intervene in this market by regulators could stifle innovation and stunt the development of new data offerings for roaming. We don’t believe that regulation, particularly of retail prices, is an appropriate move in a competitive and fast evolving market.

“This market is evolving rapidly as operators develop new and innovative services and tariff packages, including flat rate pricing packages and bundles,” said Tom Phillips, Chief Government & Regulatory Affairs Officer of the GSMA. “In such a period of rapid growth and innovation, the GSMA believes that talk of regulation is premature. The interest of the European Commission in seeing this market grow further and deliver still greater benefits to pan-European roamers is perfectly understandable and the GSMA is committed to continuing a dialogue with the Commission and national regulators to ensure that they are fully informed of the market’s progress and positive impact.”

Ultimately, considering the continued investment being made to offer data roaming services, individual mobile operators are best placed to decide what their tariffs for mobile data services should be. Operators have an interest in setting the price of data services at a level that encourages the use of such services and distinguishes them from the competition.

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