The Regulation of International Roaming in the European Union: Why the MTR has No Clothes

The European Union’s ‘Regulation on roaming on public mobile telephone networks within the Community’, adopted in 2007 and amended twice since, does not set a wholesale price cap on the termination of voice calls received by European roamers. The European Union considers that such a price cap is unnecessary because, it is assumed, the termination of calls received by European roamers is covered by national regulation of the mobile termination market. This apparent assumption is incorrect. No national regulatory authority has yet demonstrated that the termination services provided by visited networks in the context of international mobile roaming should fall within the same market as the termination services provided by mobile operators in the context of standard, direct-dial voice calls. If any authority tried to do so, it could well fail, because of differences between the services which suggest that distinct product, geographic and customer dimensions apply to the relevant market definitions.