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An adviser to Europe's top court recommended on Thursday upholding European Union rules that cap roaming prices for travellers making and receiving mobile phone calls abroad. The European Court of Justice is considering a challenge to the price caps lodged by four mobile telecom operators - Vodafone, Telefonica's O2, Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile and France Telecom's Orange.
They launched their challenge in the British High Court in 2007. The British court then asked the ECJ whether the roaming regulation, enacted in 2007 and considered a significant victory for EU lawmakers, had a proper legal basis. "The Community was entitled to impose limits on the prices charged by mobile phone companies for roaming calls in the interests of the internal market," Advocate General Poiares Maduro said in a written statement.
"Given these excessive charges and the need for timely action, a decision to regulate retail prices was an option reasonably open to the Community." The advocate general's opinion is not legally binding, but the Luxembourg-based court usually follows such guidance.
Vodafone's shares were up 1.1 percent in early trade, France Telecom was down 0.8 percent, Telefonica was 0.5 percent higher and Deutsche Telekom was 0.2 percent firmer. The DJ Stoxx telecoms index was up 0.4 percent. The EU has extended the 2007 price caps by three years to 2012 on roaming voice calls. The EU's executive European Commission also imposed cuts this year on the cost of using a mobile phone to send text messages or surf the Web by laptop. The caps made the price of texting up to 60 percent cheaper for travellers in the European Union.

Copyright Reuters, 2009

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