The European Parliament on Tuesday voted in favour of the EU telecoms reform package that will bring about an end to all roaming charges by mid-2017 and enshrine net neutrality rules into law.
The European Commission, the EU Council and the European Parliament reached a preliminary deal on both issues in June.
The final approval of the parliament, which came without any amendments being accepted, means that telecoms operators will be subject to stringent caps on roaming charges within the EU from 30 April next year. They will b permitted to charge €0.05 per minute for outgoing voice calls, €0.02 for SMS and €0.05 per megabyte of data on top of the price a customer would pay at home.
A complete ban on all roaming surcharges will come into effect on 15 June 2017.
The new legislation also requires network operators to treat all Internet traffic equally, without selectively blocking access to any content or slowing delivery. However, it leaves the way open for them to slow traffic to prevent network congestion, for example, provided any traffic management measures are "transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate", and do not last for any longer than necessary.
Operators will also be able to offer quality-based services, but only if they do not impact on the quality of the open Internet.
"Thanks to this agreement, Europe will also become the only region in [the] world which legally guarantees open Internet and net neutrality," said Spanish MEP Pilar del Castillo.
"The principle of net neutrality will be applied directly in the 28 member states," she said. "It also ensures that we will not have a two-speed Internet."
