The era of roaming-free communication in the Western Balkans region will start on Thursday (July 1st).
Mobile phone users in Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina will be able to communicate while traveling to other countries included in the agreement, at no additional cost and with the same national plan tariffs. relevant.
This process started in mid-2019, with the escalating reduction of roaming tariffs, in two stages, until their complete abolition, starting from July 1, 2021. The abolition of roaming tariffs will facilitate communication in labor and tourism movements. of citizens within the region. The process was made possible thanks to a regional agreement signed by the countries of the region in 2019, with the mediation of the European Union Commissioner for Economy and Digital Society, Mariya Gabriel. The abolition of roaming tariffs was done in the model previously followed by the European Union, since June 2017.
Earlier this month, the Steering Council of AKEP approved the regulation that paves the way for the final abolition of these tariffs. The regulation stipulates that mobile operators must provide regulated retail roaming services, at appropriate prices within the country for their subscribers, who are usually resident in Albania, at the time they travel to the Western Balkan countries. This also applies to the communication packet communication units, which users will continue to use freely even when roaming.
Although roaming charges in the Western Balkans will be lifted from 1 July, the regulation leaves room for operators to request additional charges in cases where they are unable to cover costs, resulting in impaired charging sustainability. of services within the country.
AKEP regulation also defines the evaluation methodology in cases when mobile operators may request the application of an additional roaming tariff. AKEP may accept the imposition of an additional roaming fee only in cases when roaming losses exceed 3% of the profits from the mobile services of the applicant operator.
However, even when such a difference is proven, AKEP may reject the application for an additional roaming fee. This can happen when the operator is part of a business group and has evidence of internal price transfer in favor of other group subsidiaries within the Western Balkans, especially in view of the significant imbalances of wholesale tariffs applied within the group. . Also, the request for additional tariffs will be rejected when the degree of competition in the domestic market creates space to cope with reduced margins, or when the implementation of a more restrictive fair use policy would reduce the net retail margin in roaming in less than 3%.
In exceptional circumstances, when an operator has a negative margin of mobile services and a negative net margin of retail roaming, AKEP may authorize the application of an additional tariff for regulated roaming services.
