A few years ago the EU agreed a package of measures for the EU telecoms market. Those delivered important new rules and rights for people who use landlines, mobiles and the Internet – and that means you!
As is usual for such measures, those needed to be put into national law by governments before taking effect. And now, the remaining few national governments have confirmed to the Commission that they have done this – meaning these new laws would now apply throughout the EU.
That’s great news. It means that all EU citizens would now benefit from significant new rights, like:
- the right to change your phone provider in just one day, for both fixed and mobile, while keeping the same number – so you can shop around and pick the best deal for you, and switch over without lots of inconvenience and interruption;
- shorter minimum contracts – so you don’t have to stay stuck to one provider forever; and
- the right to be told if there is a “breach” to the personal data your phone company holds about you (rights, by the way, which I think need to be extended to a wider range of sectors, not just telecoms companies).
Those rights are in addition to other powers introduced at the same time, like new tools to help us promote competition. Those deliver yet greater choice and better deals across the EU – including so that the “termination rate” charges imposed when you call a mobile or fixed number better match the true cost.
Those are significant new EU rights for consumers – make sure you’re making the most of them! And if you aren’t getting the legal rights you’re entitled to – get in touch with the relevant national authorities to make sure they know about it. Or look here for more on what the EU does for your rights as a user of phone and telecoms services.
Email This Post
RSS comments feed on this entry
But this is wonderful news! Too bad it came a bit to late for me after my immigration from the Netherlands to Italy. But for sure I will experience the benefits of this in the future as I offer internet services throughout the EU. Thanks for sharing this information and the great job you knew to achieved. For sure that hasn’t been easy. I will share this post!
‘The EU rights as a telecoms user’ is a good notification and must to be in action urgently!
Hello
can you please let me know what is the act number of these new rights and where can it be downloaded?
Thank you!
Ciao Razvan,
The Act that the post is referring to is the Directive 2002/22/EC on universal service and users’ rights relating to electronic communications networks and services which was amended by the Directive 2009/136/EC which introduced, inter alia, the benefits that are mentioned above. Indeed, a step forward telecoms users protection!
Former EU official Emma Nicholson, visits a Romanian convicted criminal, Adrian Nastase.
Look who is talking about political corruption and who is condoning it.
The EU is a very bad joke.
You always keep quiet about the other side of the coin, don’t you?
Under the pretext of liberalising the telcom market, you expedite dubious projects to spy upon the citizens (luckily everyone already carries a personal wiretap along, great). That way if every citizen will be fully identifiable, we’ll slowly shift towards a society George Orwell warned about. Do you get the point at all?! What are you going to do, asking your “good friend” Mr Guttenberg for his opinion?
In my opinion there is a new Nazi style veto against Romania and Bulgaria regarding the Schengen treaty.
Citizens from the Dutch colonies Aruba and Curacao are more free to travel in Europe than the Eastern European EU citizens.
Germany, UK and the Netherlands reinstate the apartheid style policies against Romania and Bulgaria.
Those who were the first to export slaves to North America, those who were the masterminds of the South African apartheid policies, now impose apartheid racial policies against the Eastern European “second class” citizens.
But what hope have we got when the national regulator refuses to do it’s job? The authorities in the UK in particular are particularly useless when it comes to enforcing rights, preferring to take all available opportunities to avoid doing anything.Witness for example the British police’s reluctance to go after national telecoms companies for illegal interception of private communications on an industrial scale whilst at the same time going after individual journalists for hacking offenses – and even then only after this got a lot of publicity (they actively tried to avoid doing anything about that one too).Additional EU rights mean nothing if the EU can’t ensure that these rights are actually respected, and from what I understand the commission can only have an impact on how laws are written on the national level, not how they are actually used. Right now the UK seems more interested in helping to find ways for companies around the inconvenient laws rather than actually enforce them.
Just a small clarification on my original post: it would seem that laws in the UK are only for the little people. Large corporations get dial-a-minister schemes; the rest of us have to put up with what little we can get out of the authorities. Getting a useful response from these authorities can be extremely difficult when those in a position of authority are themselves corrupt (isn’t it interesting that the police in the UK refused to properly investigate the phone hacking in detail until forced to do so by public opinion, and since then a number of police officers have since been arrested as a result of the investigation that was forced upon them?) Of course it would be nice if we had regulators that did their job rather than pay more attention to their CV and their future prospects outside government. At least one person that used to work for the ICO in the UK who appears to have been involved in discussions surrounding Google now works for Google. The ICO refused to take any action against Google for their StreetView wifi antics. Personally I’m beginning to think that the EU commission should give up on trying to create rights when they can’t enforce the ones that they have already created.