Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has welcomed the European Commission statement that roaming charges will be scrapped on 15 June 2017 and then replaced by new \u2018roam like at home\u2019 rules.<\/p>\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said he had raised his own concerns about loopholes in the legislation with the head of the European Parliament information office in Dublin at a meeting of the Oireachtas European Union Affairs Committee and got positive assurances that the legislation would not allow phone operators an opt out clause.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cI welcome the European Commission\u2019s statement on roaming charges, which states that from 15 June 2017 the current data roaming charges outside Ireland and in the European Union\u00a0will no longer apply, and customers will instead be charged the same rates as the pay at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis reduction is a positive development and the rumours in the media of some Irish providers somehow trying to opt out of the regulation is believed to have led to the Commission\u2019s\u00a0clarifying statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn its own statement the Commission said it is aware of reports in the Irish media concerning mobile roaming charges to Irish consumers after\u00a015 June and that there is no loophole by which part of the domestic data allowance could be regarded as gift or side benefit and would therefore not count when traveling abroad. They also say that the new EU rules also cover voice and SMS services.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, operators \u00a0will be able to \u00a0choose to offer contracts without any roaming, or offer specially designed \u2018alternative roaming tariffs\u2019 that fall outside the default regime, but this must be explicitly chosen by customers and will not impact on existing customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe news that roaming charges will be scrapped will come as a relief and give greater certainty to many consumers who wait in terror for their next mobile phone bill following a holiday in Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had raised the issue recently at a meeting of the European Affairs Committee with the head of the European Parliament\u2019s office in Dublin, and particularly the rumours and concerns that some mobile operators were looking to get around the new legislation. He assured me that this wouldn\u2019t be the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe National Regulatory Authorities will now have an increased role in ensuring that the rules of the roaming and implementing regulations are not being circumvented by the phone operators.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has welcomed the European Commission statement that roaming charges will be scrapped on 15 June 2017 and then replaced by new \u2018roam like at home\u2019 rules. The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said he had raised his own concerns about loopholes in the legislation with the head of the European Parliament […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[295,294],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communications","category-roaming-charges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3033,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032\/revisions\/3033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}