BEREC International Roaming Compliance Report (Regulation (EU) No 531/512 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2012 on roaming)

The 3rd BEREC international roaming compliance report was adopted during the 16th plenary meeting of the Board of Regulators (26.09.2013, Riga). It provides information on the level of compliance by the mobile operators across the EU EEA area with the provisions set out in the 2012 Roaming Regulation (3rd Roaming Regulation). The report is drafted on the basis of the replies received to a detailed BEREC questionnaire on the implementation of the obligations for operators set out in the Roaming Regulation. Those questions did not address obligations to be implemented by 1 July 2014.

The data gathered shows that the vast majority of mobile network operators (MNOs) comply with the obligation to provide wholesale access to other MNOs, MVNOs and re-sellers. Access seekers mostly used existing wholesale bilateral roaming agreements and, for that reason, reference offers provided by the MNOs were rarely requested. According to the MVNOs’ responses, there is some threat of discriminatory conduct and misuse of market power in the domestic market from host MNOs, such as trading domestic prices for contract terms for wholesale resale roaming, or in some specific cases not allowing MVNOs to make use of the wholesale roaming access reference offer.

Some further work may be needed by operators to technically adapt the techniques to provide transparency measures to new devices such as tablets. In some very specific cases, BEREC has identified issues also with potential non-compliance with the regulation in applying alternative tariffs by default to new customers without the deliberate option for them by customers.