70% of European citizens consider an EU intervention is needed to reduce the costs of telephone calls abroad using a cell phone: that’s the finding of a survey conducted by Eurobarometer on a sample of 25,000 citizens of the 25 member states and published last week. “Excessively high prices discourage the use of cell phones abroad: that damages consumers, damages European industry and damages Europe”, said Viviane Reding, Commissioner for the Information Society, commenting on the Eurobarometer findings. She added: “Reducing the costs of roaming is not only a political responsibility of the Commission, but may also represent an interesting commercial model, as demonstrated by the recent initiative of some operators that have begun to offer special tariff packages for roaming”. According to the website of the European Commission (http://ec.europa.eu/index_it.htm), “European users continue to pay between 4 and 6 euro for a four minute telephone call in roaming abroad”, while “in some cases the cost of a call of this type may even exceed 12 euros”. “European users continue to pay between 4 and 6 euro for a four minute telephone call in roaming abroad”, while “in some cases the cost of a call of this type may even exceed 12 euros”.
