With 2.2 euro cents per minute, Romanians pay the second cheapest mobile tariffs in the EU

Newsroom 07/08/2013 | 13:14

Across the European Union, customers pay very different prices for mobile services.

While in countries such as Lithuania or Romania, mobile customers pay 1.9 euro cents per minute and 2.2 euro cents per minute, respectively, in countries such as The Netherlands, they pay on average 14.7 euro cents per minute. These prices are even high above the European average of 9.1 euro cents per minute, according to the Digital Agenda Scoreboard 2012.

These price differences cannot be explained by differences in quality, in the cost of providing the services or by differences between countries regarding the consumers’ purchase power, according to European officials.

Neelie Kroes (in picture), vice-president of the European Commission, said that the 28 national telecom markets in Europe do not bring the same advantages to European consumers as one single unified telecom market would.

Kroes said measures must be rapidly taken at the level of the EU to ensure a real unified market and an optimum degree of connectivity at the level of the entire continent.