End of roaming charges in EU and EEA: Swiss continue to pay

This leaves Switzerland as the only country far and wide where the unloved tariffs still apply. Swiss cell phone users do not benefit from the new EU regulation. Because Switzerland is not part of the EU, Swiss telecom providers also do not receive the regulated purchase prices. For this reason, the Swiss must continue to pay charges for using their cell phone or tablet via mobile networks abroad.

The sum involved is considerable: In 2015, roaming revenues of all Swiss telecom providers amounted to CHF 625 million. The majority of this was attributable to the EU and the EEA, according to the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM).

In Switzerland, however, roaming revenues have declined significantly in recent years. In 2010, they were still at CHF 926 million. In addition to price reductions by Swiss telecommunications providers, this is also due to the increasing popularity of bundled offers, which include a certain amount of roaming usage as a flat rate.

Stone of the stumbling block

Roaming rates have long been a bone of contention. As early as 2004, the price supervisor described them as "possibly excessive". In 2007, it then called on the Federal Council to consider a roaming agreement with the EU after the latter had introduced caps on cell phone use abroad for the first time. After all, Switzerland should not become a high-price island. Several political initiatives failed in the National Council and the Council of States. The then President of the Federal Communications Commission (Comcom), Marc Furrer, repeatedly campaigned for Switzerland to join the EU roaming regime. Most recently, he told the NZZ am Sonntag last fall: "The EU Commission was very open on this, but the European telecom companies fought against it."

Without a bilateral agreement, EU telecom companies cannot be forced to offer regulated wholesale prices to Swiss providers. "They are already squirming a lot with regard to the abolition of roaming charges in the EU," says new Comcom president Stephan Netzle. According to Salt CEO Andreas Schönenberger, EU providers are more likely to demand higher fees from the Swiss again in view of declining revenues from roaming in the EU.

Agreement with EU not very realistic

However, a bilateral roaming agreement with the EU is not high on the government's agenda. On the one hand, Swiss roaming prices have already fallen significantly in recent years. On the other hand, an isolated bilateral agreement is out of the question at the present time, says Netzle. In the 2014 telecommunications report, the Federal Council had assessed such an agreement as unrealistic at the time. And in the ongoing partial revision of the Telecommunications Act, the Federal Council's dispatch and a bill with measures to limit roaming prices are currently being drafted. No details can yet be given about the exact form this will take, Bakom informs.

Competition does not work

If politicians were to unilaterally introduce maximum prices for Swisscom, Salt and Sunrise, this would be entirely at the expense of Swiss providers. This is because the foreign telecom companies would continue to charge their roaming fees. A price cap for Swisscom, Sunrise and Salt is legally and politically unenforceable, says the Comcom president. That would be an encroachment on contractual freedom. "We believe that prices are the result of competition," says Netzle. But this does not work, the body of European telecom regulators (Gerek or Berec) had already determined in 2006.

Resistance from the telecom industry

The Swiss telecoms industry sees things differently, resisting the abolition of roaming charges, which are lucrative for them, through regulation like in the EU. "Intervention is unnecessary, market forces are at play and Swisscom's roaming prices have been falling massively for years even without regulation," explains Swisscom spokesman Sepp Huber. For many customers, roaming is already included in their flat-rate subscriptions. Politically, too, abolition does not have a majority in Bern.

This is because it would hit the profits of the partly state-owned Swisscom, half of whose dividends flow into the state coffers. Moreover, abolition would hit Sunrise and Salt harder than Swisscom. The small providers would have the problem that they would have to pay more in the wholesale area than they earn with it, says Furrer: "Their customers use the foreign networks much more often than, conversely, foreigners use the Salt and Sunrise networks."

Consumer advocates for price cap

In view of the situation, consumer protectionists are calling on the Swiss government to take countermeasures: they are demanding that the Federal Council not only be able to enact measures to lower retail tariffs, but must do so if prices are too high. Since an agreement with the EU is currently not very realistic, the Federal Council should set price caps on its own initiative even without such an agreement, writes the Alliance of Consumer Protection Organizations (SKS, FRC, ACSI) in an open letter to Communications Minister Doris Leuthard. On the other hand, the abolition of EU roaming charges is too harsh an incursion of politics into the market. This is shown by the multitude of exemptions and workarounds in the new regulation. "The whole EU roaming regulation is a bureaucracy monster," says one industry expert. The cost of using your cell phone abroad is there nonetheless, and it's now wrapped up in new rate plans. "There is no such thing as a zero tariff," says Netzle. (Johannes Brinkmann/SDA)