News
Brussels working on a new set of proposals following intervention from EU president Juncker.
The European Commission has binned its draft fair usage policy (FUP) regarding free roaming, just days after it was published.
The document, shared by the Commission on Monday, proposed limiting customers to 90 days of fee-free roaming per year, and obliged them to connect to their roaming provider’s home network at least once every 30 days.
The measures aimed to customers buying a SIM card in a country with cheaper prices and using it full-time in their home market.
The draft document also said that the 90-day/30-day rules do not apply to customers who connect to a foreign network as well as their home network within one day, protecting subscribers who travel to another country on a daily basis for work, or who live near a border.
There were also proposed rules – written in baffling legalese – designed to stop consumers buying a prepaid SIM purely to use for free roaming, and to prevent customers on unlimited tariffs from getting carried away and using too much data while abroad.
"The Commission services have, on the instruction of [EU] president [Jean-Claude] Juncker, withdrawn the draft and are working on a new version," said a note on the European Commission’s Website dated Thursday.
No further explanation was given; Total Telecom reached out to the European Commission but had yet to hear back at the time of publication.
