Why is it more expensive to send a SMS from Malta to another E.U. country (eur 0.23) than from another E.U. country to Malta (eur 0.13)?
Why is a German for example charged eur 0.13 for a SMS to Germany while a Maltese is charged eur 0.23 for the same SMS?
This questions remains unanswered by all 3 mobile phone operators and the regulator.
Once again the Malta Communication Authority (MCA) is urged to strengthen the regulation of internet provision of in Malta. As already happened in August 2008, recent events have shown how fragile the current provision of internet in Malta can be. Despite having increased the number of cables connecting to the international internet grid, it is clear that no failover policies are in place. Customers of one of the major ISPs have been left stranded for several hours, depriving them of basic internet and international telephony.
It is amazing that since last major internet disruption in August 2008, no failover and no alternatives are given to the public. It is not understandable why the MCA has failed in its role of regulator.
The recent interruption of services (Enemalta, Melita) has caused damage to the business community; the regulators and the government should make every effort in order to avoid these situations in the near future.
Following new EU regulations regarding mobile telephony, Prof. Arnold Cassola, AD Chairperson, said:’Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party, welcomes the introduction of the new EU roaming regulation proposed by the European Commission in September 2008 and approved by the European Parliament in April 2009. The new EU Roaming Regulation makes sure that the prices for SMS roaming are harmonized and capped. Consumers will also be able to surf the web, download movies or send holiday pictures with their mobile without experiencing ‘bill shocks’ on returning back home from holidays this summer.’
Henrik Piski, Spokesperson for IT and Communications adds: ‘Alternattiva Demokratika notes that Vodafone, Melita and GO mobile have implemented the new regulations. GO Mobile is also urged to revise its price for sending a SMS from Malta to another EU country, currently priced at 23 euro cents, while sending an SMS to Malta while visiting another EU country is charged at 13 euro cents.’
Prices of mobile phone calls made between EU countries will be further lowered as of July this year, according to an agreement sealed yesterday (24 March) over the EU’s so-called ‘roaming regulation’. As part of the deal, however, telecoms companies will still be able to subject users to an initial charging period of 30 seconds, which should enable operators to maintain some revenue.
of the final agreement, mobile phone calls passed from one EU country to another will be capped at €43 cents per minute from July 2009, down from the current limit of €46 cents. This cap should be further decreased to €39 cents from July 2010, and to €35 cents from July 2011. All prices exclude VAT.The compromise stems from an initial European Commission proposal to limit roaming calls to €34 cents per minute by 2012. During the first votein Parliament at the beginning of March, MEPs proposed a cap of €40 cents per minute, to be applied from July 2010 to mid-2012.
Mobile users will also benefit from lower charges for phone calls received while abroad. These fees will be capped from the current €22 cents per minute to €11 cents per minute from July 2011 (VAT excluded). Moreover, a new cap has been introduced for roamed text messages, which should cost a maximum of €11 cents (VAT excluded) from July 2009.
Operators are of course allowed to offer much lower prices than the maximum charges identified by the EU, although this was seldom the case under the first roaming regulation.
No more bill shocks
More good news for consumers came with an agreement on a new system to prevent so-called ‘bill shocks’ for data roaming, which frequently hit mobile Internet users when abroad. The new regulation sets a €50 limit for data roaming per month (excluding VAT). Once a customer reaches 80% of this amount, the mobile operator will send a warning message, giving details of a procedure to continue data roaming. Should the user fail to respond, the operator must automatically cut the service once the cap is reached.
Negotiators rejected suggestions from the Parliament to consider a specific volume of data as a limit for data roaming, which MEPs proposed capping at 20 megabytes per month. “This would have discouraged companies from offering lower tariffs for mobile Web traffic,” a Commission official explained.
Compromise on billing system
The Parliament also had to give up its proposal to apply per-second tariffs as of the first second of a roamed phone conversation. Currently, most operators impose per-minute tariffs for roamed calls, a practice which ends up billing customers for 24% more time than they actually spend on the phone, according to the European telecom regulators group (ERG). “It’s like taking the train from Brussels to Paris and being charged to go to Rome,” explained Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva.
The compromise will allow operators to impose an initial charging period of 30 seconds, after which the per-second system will be applied. This means that if an operator wants to exploit this advantage, a roamed phone call lasting 15, three or 27 seconds will always be charged as though it had lasted 30 seconds.
Since a week, we are out of internet at the office in Sliema. As we are using the wireless internet provided by Vanilla, we climbed on our roof to check the connection of our antenna just to realize that as a new building has been finished in Tower Road/Bisazza street, we have lost our connection to the emitting antenna. I wonder if there is some sort of regulation, it is not correct that with the erection of buildings, one looses the wireless services one used to enjoy in the past…
Simon Busuttil has published today an article in The Times regarding his enquiry at the E.U. Commission about the mobile prepaid time window in Malta. The Commission made it clear that it is for the national authorities and/or national courts to determine whether specific practices in Malta constitute unfair (and, therefore, illegal) practices.
So the question is whether, in Malta, MCA and the Consumer Affairs Division consider this practice as illegal or, at least, one that merits a change in our national law. I will be raising this matter with them accordingly.
He will continue to follow this issue very closely while I will continue locally my legal inquire.
Link: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090121/opinion/your-phones-time-window
E-5323/08EN
Answer given by Mrs Reding
on behalf of the Commission
(22.12.2008)
The question of the Honourable Member concerns the time period within which credit must be used by pre-paid subscribers in Malta. The issue of time windows for mobile top-up cards was already addressed in the Commission’s reply to written question E-0182/071. This issue is particularly relevant in view of Malta’s high proportion of pre-paid mobile subscribers (91% in 2007), the highest percentage in the European Union2.
This particular issue has not been addressed in the Directives constituting the EU regulatory framework for electronic communications. It is a contractual issue between the operator and the subscriber, regulated by the market itself according to the specific characteristics and consumer’s needs in the different national markets.
The Universal Service Directive3 nevertheless provides that national regulatory authorities shall promote the interests of end-users, by ensuring that transparent and up-to-date information on applicable prices and tariffs and on conditions for using electronic communications services is available. The issue of transparency of tariffs and conditions is also being addressed in the ongoing review of this regulatory framework in order to increase consumer protection.
Failure to provide the consumer with clear, appropriate and complete information relating to the prices and other important features of the telecoms services (such as the usage limitation in time/expiration date of the service) by a telecommunications provider also falls under the scope of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive4 and can be regarded as a misleading practice. Under the Directive, operators / retailers must provide consumers with all the material information they need including prices and expiry dates in order to make informed choice and purchase decisions. Competent national authorities and courts may on a case-by-case basis rule on such commercial practices. Malta has transposed the Directive in January 2008.
In addition, consumers’ rights in respect of standard consumer contracts are safeguarded by the Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts5, which prevents significant imbalances in the rights and obligations of consumers on the one hand, and businesses on the other. This general requirement is supplemented by a list of terms which may be regarded as unfair and taken into consideration. Terms which are found by a national court, tribunal or administrative body to be unfair under the Directive are not binding on consumers.
The competence to enforce national measures transposing the abovementioned Directives rests mainly with national competent authorities, in this case the Malta Communications Authority or consumer protection bodies, which may wish to investigate this matter and take any necessary action in accordance with national laws.
1 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/QP-WEB/home.jsp.
2 Source: 13th Implementation Report, March 2008.
3 Directive 2002/22/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 March 2002 on universal service and users’ rights relating to electronic communications networks and services; OJ L 108, 24.4.2002.
4 Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market and amending Council Directive 84/450/EEC, Directives 97/7/EC, 98/27/EC and 2002/65/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council, OJ L 149, 11.6.2005.
To be continued…
Personal debts are often created by mobile phone usage in Europe. It is
mainly due to the non-transparency of costs and the myriads of different
prepaid and post paid contracts. Matters got even worse with the
introduction of mobile phone number portability as customers are not
anymore aware of the mobile phone operator they might be calling. The
pricing of calls inside a mobile phone network operator is usually much
cheaper than calling a number of another mobile phone operator.
The situation of prepaid users is even worse as they have absolutely no
control of their spending, they can not review their communication
history as they do not get statements or there is no online statements
available. There have been in the past some sms scam where people have
been invited to reply to a received sms (participation in a lottery for
example) while the reply number was a premium number costing often a few
euros…(actually if you want to invent a system to get very fast rich,
just set up a system like that 
)
So the action I would like to take is to oblige the operators to send a
sms to the client after each call, sms, mms or data connection informing
him about the costs involved in the last service been taken.
The Malta Communication Authority is urged to strengthen the regulation of the internet provision in Malta. Recent events have shown how fragile the current provision of internet in Malta can be. There are for the moment only two cables connecting the local internet to the European backbone, each of them owned by a private company. Regulations should be in place for extraordinary events: each cable operator has to be allowed to use appropriated bandwidth from its competitor when technical faults occur in their cable connectivity.
During the internet cable connectivity interruption occurred to GO ten days ago, the public realized that there was no real fallback procedure in place. GO users were not able to use the international internet connection. As Malta has a particular geographical position and connectivity to the international hub is only provided by two companies, the MCA has to make sure that these serious events should not happen again. It is not acceptable to have to wait months or years till alternative cables to the next hub are set in place. The existing infrastructure has to be fairly shared between the two operators under the supervision of the Malta Communication Authority in these extraordinary situations.
Reference:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/index_en.htm
