By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, (Reuters) – Thursday’s EU legislative vote supported lower wholesale roaming fees for telecom operators paid to peer companies in other EU countries. This policy benefits consumers and will be extended for a decade.

In December 2013, the European Parliament and EU nations had made a political agreement. In the weeks ahead, they will give formal consent for price caps to enter into force.

In 2017, the European Commission removed retail roaming fees and established price caps for wholesale roaming costs. This was done to avoid ‘bill shock’ after returning from holiday abroad.

To benefit from tourist calls back home, telecoms companies in the southern European region prefer wholesale prices to be as low as possible. Operators in northern Europe tend to argue for lower wholesale prices.

The wholesale voice tariff, which was agreed to last year by political agreement, will remain at 0.022 euros per minute in the future and drop to 0.019 euros from 2025 through 2032.

The wholesale rate for SMS messages will be 0.004 Euro per message in the next year and 0.003 by 2025-2032.

Data tariffs are set to be cap at 1.80 Euros per gigabyte in 2019, 1.55 in 2024, and slowly decreasing to 1 in 2027-2032.

Angelika Winzig from the EU, who was responsible for steering the matter through the assembly said that “by significantly cutting wholesale caps, we create greater fairness, and competition on the Telecommunications Market.”

The EU legislature had initially sought greater price cuts than the European Commission, while the EU countries, lobbying by telecoms providers wanted lower reductions.

Following lawmakers’ calls, the Parliament announced that the Commission would investigate ways to reduce the cost of intra-EU calling. This is the surcharges charged for calls made from EU countries. It currently stands at 19c.