European regulators delay plans to ban roaming charges until 2018; propose net neutrality rules allowing privileged access in some cases
Data roaming to stay, EU proposes — MEPs will consider proposals that data roaming charges in Europe should stay, among others
Context & Ripple Effects
This March 2015 proposal is the moment the EU's roaming endgame slips: instead of abolishing data roaming charges outright, regulators propose keeping them until 2018 while opening the door to paid fast lanes under new net neutrality rules. Within months, the direction reversed — by June 2015 the EU had committed to eliminating roaming charges for calls, SMS, and data from June 2017 (an accelerated timetable), and a February 2017 deal locked it in ahead of this article's later date.
The second thread here — allowing 'privileged access' in some cases — is what the related coverage keeps returning to: Europe's 2016 agreement on cross-EU roaming access for Netflix and other video subscriptions carved out streaming services, and in 2021 an EU court ruled that Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom's 'zero tariff' unlimited-streaming offers violated both roaming and net neutrality rules.
First-order effects
- European mobile operators keep charging data roaming fees longer than abolitionists wanted, while gaining legal cover to sell prioritized traffic under the proposed carve-outs.
- MEPs now hold the deciding vote on both provisions, making Parliament the choke point for whether fast-lane deals survive at all.
Second-order effects
- Streaming providers benefit from the parallel portability track — the Netflix cross-EU roaming agreement shows content subscriptions, not just calls and SMS, being pulled into the single-market framework.
- Carriers' zero-rating bundles built around privileged access become litigation targets once the rules bind, as the 2021 ruling against Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom demonstrates.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, EU telecom regulation ratchets: negotiated delays and exemptions get overtaken by faster liberalization, then the surviving exceptions get litigated away case by case.
- Net neutrality enforcement in Europe shifts from rule-writing to court-tested boundaries between legitimate network management and paid discrimination — with major carriers as the recurring defendants.
The trend: EU telecom policy is converging on open, borderless digital access across member states, with each regulatory compromise eventually tightened or overturned by later legislation and courts.