Telecoms giant Telefónica has responded to the EU’s new roaming legislation by introducing a standard roaming mobile tariff which they claim is “considerably cheaper than the EU’s regulated rate.”
The new pan-European tariff gives consumers 25MB usage – equal to 250 visits to “essential” websites – anywhere in the 27 European Union countries for €2 a day, or £1.99 for UK users. Any Telefónica users who exceed 25MB will be immediately notified.
The European parliament ruled this week that from July 1, phone companies can only charge 70 cents per megabyte of data, as well as price caps on sending and receiving calls and texts overseas.
José María Álvarez-Pallete, chairman and CEO of Telefónica Europe, said: “Our European data tariff gives our smartphone customers great value while allowing them to do what really matters – to stay connected wherever they are in a simple and transparent way and with complete peace of mind.”
Telefónica did not give a specific date for the change, only stating that the tariff will be rolled out across the rest of Europe “this summer”, having been available in Germany since May.
It’s been a mixed week for the company, with the release of their new VoIP-based app TU Me amid struggling European first quarter figures.
Despite Telefónica calling overall figures “solid”, their first quarter results came in below analyst estimates, with the Latin American arm of the business anchoring profitability.
Telefónica’s European division posted an operating income before depreciation and amortisation (OIBDA) decline of 15% to €2.51 billion. The company’s Latin American results were significantly better, with OIBDA going up 0.8% to €2.55 billion.
Andres Bolumburu, an analyst at Banco de Sabadell, told Bloomberg: “The performance in Europe was very poor this quarter…while Spain continues its decline and Latin America provides positive growth overall.”
The domestic results can be partly explained by Spain’s economy returning to recession, but also Telefónica losing customers to discount alternatives such as Jazztel and TeliaSonera’s Spanish mobile operator, Yoigo. Telefónica stated in the report that their European operation “continued to face economic headwinds.”
