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Mobile & Wireless Communications: Lowering Costs, Stimulating Growth

Growth in mobile communications and high-speed mobile data services is driven primarily by market forces, but these only exist given a supportive policy environment that spans Europe's single market, providing the industry with economies of scale. The European Commission therefore stimulates growth in the sector partly by creating the policy environment needed for these services to flourish, regulating the industry where required.

Overview ¦ Relevant Policies ¦ Example Projects

Lowering Costs for Mobile Consumers

Thanks to the competition the Commission unleashed on Europe’s telecoms sector, call costs have plunged and innovative products and services have appeared. Europe’s success in mobile communications is based on the Europe-wide adoption of the GSM standard. Developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) with the support of the European Commission, GSM allowed interoperability between networks, handsets and services. Suppliers could develop products for a ‘home market’ of hundreds of millions of people – and did so. The resulting competition drove further development, driving hardware and call prices down in a virtuous circle. Today, more than 2 billion people in over 217 countries and territories use mobile phones based on the GSM standard.

Today's EU’s regulatory framework builds on this success, creating a level playing field for all communications operators and thus stimulating the appearance of new mobile broadband services. The framework ensures that national regulators promote innovation and competition, and provides ‘investment certainty’ for companies. It is currently being revised as part of the i2010 Single European Information Space, focusing on using regulatory and other instruments to create a modern, market-oriented regulatory framework.

Prices for using your mobile phone abroad, however, have not dropped as sharply as national calls. These very high international "mobile roaming” charges currently affect 147 million EU citizens (37 million tourists and 110 million business customers).

The Commission has been working to decrease roaming charges already for a number of years. In October 2005, the Commission launched a consumer website to help people get a better roaming deal when they travel. A March 2006 update of the tariffs showed that prices had not dropped in many cases - in some cases, in fact, they had risen.

"prices paid by users should not be unjustifiably higher"

Hence the July 2006 proposal for a new EU regulation on international roaming to ensure that the prices paid by users for international roaming services, when travelling within the Community, should not be unjustifiably higher than the charges they pay when calling within their home country.

Radio Spectrum & Non-Cellular Communications

All these mobile communications applications, of course, are driving demand for radio spectrum, which all wireless applications use. Europe's radio spectrum policy aims to ensure spectrum access rules do not fragment the internal market for mobile services and equipment. Furthermore, spectrum access should be facilitated across the EU, notably through market mechanisms. The planned analogue switch-off, where terrestrial television is planned to "go digital" across Europe by around 2012, could assist the current spectrum scarcity by freeing up frequencies for new applications. The Commission proposed a new strategy for a forward-looking radio spectrum policy in 2005 to be implemented including by reforming the regulatory framework for electronic communications.

3G networks and services are only part of the picture. Another technology - Radio Local Area Networks (R-LANs, also known as W-LAN, WiMAX, Wi-Fi and fixed wireless) - provides Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) in ‘hotspots’. 

They are not cellular, so users cannot access the Internet 'on the move' as they can with a 3G service. Instead they access the Internet via 'hotspots', generally found in company offices, cafés, airport lounges.

European policy towards Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) aims to stimulate their development by:

• encouraging Member States to allow BWA deployment without undue restrictions;
• strengthening the EU single market by harmonising the conditions of use of BWA applications.

Satellite communications can also provide wireless communications and internet access (see the Satellite theme). Television, finally, is also going mobile - see the Mobile Broadcasting theme.

Mobile Content & Services

young Europeans are getting their Internet-enabled mobile phones as early as primary school

In the final analysis, of course, mobile broadband services will only be as good as the content and services they make available on the move. Policies for overcoming obstacles to rolling out all forms of new digital content and services - from copyright issues to harmonising the supply of Public Sector Information - are set out in detail in the Content & Services theme.

One, however, is of particular relevant to mobile communications. The Protection of Minors and Human Dignity Recommendation - a December 2006 update of an original 1998 Recommendation focusing on internet content - focuses in part on ensuring that young people are not exposed to inappropriate content.

Following an initiative by Commissioner Reding, leading mobile operators are committing themselves to safeguard children from harmful and illegal mobile content. The new initiative will cover among others access control for adult content, awareness-raising campaigns for parents and children, the classification of commercial content according to national standards of decency and appropriateness and the fight against illegal content on mobiles.

Given that young Europeans are getting their Internet-enabled mobile phones as early as primary school, all stakeholders in the mobile communications industry across Europe must cooperate to ensure they are not exposed to this content over their mobile phones.

Last Updated March 2007

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