La UE baja precios de llamadas

EU cuts overseas mobile costs

The European Commission has proposed legislation to reduce the cost of using a mobile phone in other EU countries by as much as seventy percent. The Commission plans to force firms to reduce roaming charges, which are levied on people when they use their mobile phones abroad.

Theo Leggett reports.

Taking a mobile phone abroad can be an expensive business. A British traveller making a local call in Spain, for example, can easily end up paying double the cost of an equivalent call made back home. But according to the EU information commissioner, Viviane Reding, such high charges simply can't be justified:

"There is no link between what the consumer pays and what the costs to the operators are. The consumer pays five times more than the cost, that's not normal, we have to change that."

The Commission has proposed setting strict limits on the amount mobile phone companies can charge one another for handling roamed calls. After six months, it'll set limits for the actual prices charged to consumers as well.

But people within the industry are unhappy. They say that charges for making calls abroad are coming down already, and a cap on roaming prices will simply make other services more expensive.

Theo Legget, BBC News, Brussels

VOCABULARY

an equivalent
un equivalente

simply can't be justified
que simplemente no se puede justificar

link
un vínculo

consumer
el consumidor

operators
los operadores o compañías que operan los red telefónica celular

roamed calls
llamadas hechas con celulares en el extranjero, también llamado servicio de itinerancia o "roaming"

people within the industry
personas que trabajan en una industria, en este caso la telefonía móvil

a cap
un límite

roaming prices
los precios de las llamadas hechas con celulares en el extranjero

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