International Roaming BEREC Benchmark Data Report April 2017 - September 2017

This BEREC Benchmark Report on International Roaming (the “Report”) presents the results of the 20th round of data collection on European international roaming services undertaken by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). The Report covers the period April 2017 – September 2017, i.e. the 2nd and 3rd quarter 2017. The Report also includes data from previous rounds of data collection conducted by BEREC and its predecessor, the European Regulators Group (ERG), to provide context for the current figures. The earliest data is from the 2nd quarter 2007, when the Roaming Regulation was about to enter into force. The applicable regulatory framework for this data collection is Roaming Regulation (EU) No. 531/2012, as amended by Regulation (EU) No. 2120/2015 and by Regulation (EU) No. 2017/920, applied in the European Union (EU), which includes new requirements for the retail and wholesale regulated tariffs for voice, SMS and data roaming. The assessment of the international roaming market was based on the requirements set out in Article 19 (4) of the Roaming Regulation. In order to assess the competitive developments in the Union-wide roaming markets, BEREC has to regularly collect data from national regulatory authorities on the development of retail and wholesale charges for regulated voice, SMS and data roaming services, including wholesale charges applied for balanced and unbalanced roaming traffic respectively. It shall also collect data on the wholesale roaming agreements not subject to the maximum wholesale roaming charges provided for in Articles 7, 9 or 12 and on the implementation of contractual measures at wholesale level aiming to prevent permanent roaming or anomalous or abusive use of wholesale roaming access for purposes other than the provision of regulated roaming services to roaming providers’ customers while the latter are periodically travelling within the Union. On the basis of the collected data, BEREC also has to report regularly on the evolution of pricing and consumption patterns in the Member States for both domestic and roaming services and the evolution of actual wholesale roaming rates for unbalanced traffic between roaming providers and on the relationship between retail prices, wholesale charges and wholesale costs for roaming services. BEREC shall assess how closely those elements relate to each other.