The EU is preparing to build the foundations of the digital single market, from the end of the era of roaming and geoblocking (the practice which prevents European citizens from concluding cross-border online purchases without adding surcharges based on the nationality of the customers), up to the VAT cut on e-books and copyright reform. These are the main new arrivals.
ROAMING GOODBYE
The key date will be the 15 June 2017, day they will come completely eliminate the extra costs of roaming. What does this mean? Users will be able to make calls, send messages and surf online at their own "domestic" rate. It will be a huge cost benefit, especially for those who travel a lot or spend long periods abroad, such as Erasmus students for example.
However, this revolution must not be the trigger for fraud and abuse; it will be forbidden to buy cheaper SIM cards in Europe and then use them in Italy, given that the "principle of residence or stable ties" with the member state of the operator whose SIM card you bought (in addition to Erasmus students, cross-border workers also fall within this status).
The suffered vote (12 in favour, 9 abstentions and 7 against), the 28 members of the European Union recently approved the anti-abuse rules.
I managers of mobile telephony will have the right to request proof of residence or links with the country where the SIM card is requested. They will have to rely on the billing address on the bills to verify whether or not a user is a resident of the country in which the telephone contract was signed up.
Also, operators will need to wait at least four months, in the event of higher-than-normal data consumption, before requesting clarification from your customer. The latter will have in turn 14 days to reply, giving his operator the clarifications on the situation. In any case, the operator will not be able to impose extra costs higher than the wholesale ones (which have not yet been established but will be by March '17).
It's still not clear whether roaming will be a truly free service for over 800 million European consumers, or if there will be extra costs in the event of non-compliance with certain conditions, such as for example: insignificant national traffic compared to foreign traffic, long inactivity of a SIM associated with almost exclusive use in roaming, use of multiple SIM cards roaming by the same user.
Meanwhile a Industry Commission of the European Parliament gave the green light to tariff caps for European operators: the maximum rates applied by TLCs range from 0,03 euros for voice calls and 0,01 euros for text messages and 85 cents per megabyte.
e-BOOK, VAT AND SHOPPING WITHOUT BORDERS
In the coming year they will have to be approved numerous measures still under discussion in the European Parliament.
Over all, it stop all VAT for e-books , cross-border portability of online content services. To be clearer, in 2017 your subscription to Netflix will be accessible also abroad or, again, you can take advantage of special prices for rental cars on all sites in EU countries, without being redirected to the one of origin.
Other key stages of the digital turning point will be thecopyright reform approval, opposed by the superpowers Facebook Google and Youtube. The Commission intends to revise EU rules to make it easier for researchers to use 'text mining and data mining' technologies for analyzing large datasets.
