Vodafone and mmO2 hauled over the coals on roaming

The EC has concluded its investigations into some of the UK's biggest mobile operators - and concluded that two of them have been overcharging foreign visitors to use their services.

Both Vodafone and mmO2 have received a "statement of objection" from the EC that claims that both have previously been abusing their "dominant market position" by charging visitors to the UK excessively to use their roaming services.

The announcement by Competition Commissioner Mario Monti completes a three-year investigation into roaming charges levied by the UK's major operators. T-Mobile and Orange were also investigated by Europe but no charges were brought.

The allegations against the operators centre on the period between 1997 and September 2003 for Vodafone and between 1998 and September 2003 for mmO2. Up until that period, subscribers of foreign networks would have the UK network they used selected at random by their phones' SIM.

According to the Commission, that means there's no competitive pressure for any of the operators to limit their prices because their networks will be selected without any input from the user.

Vodafone and mmO2 have two months to respond to the charges. If they are found to have acted anticompetitively, the EC could fine both operators 10 per cent of their turnover - which is in the hundreds of millions of pounds for both.

An mmO2 spokesman said the company would be "defending vigorously itself" against the suggestion of anti-competitive behaviour. "The deals we do are bilateral - if we have an agreement with a Spanish operator, they charge us as much as we charge them. Why they've taken the UK market in isolation is perplexing… we're baffled," he said. A Vodafone spokesman said the operator would be responding to the EC statement but it "will be confidential".

Ewan Sutherland, executive director of INTUG ( the international telecommunications users group) - the association whose 1998 report into roaming kick-started the EC investigation and whose representatives have given evidence to the EC - said Europe is unlikely to let the issue lie.

"The mobile operators desperately hoped they could kick this one into the long grass… they've made it perfectly clear they'll contest it and Commission knew before it launched this they'd end up in the Court of Justice sometime in 2008. It shows how badly they feel about it," Sutherland said.

Has the threat of EU action scared the operators into action? It appears not. "I've been looking into the roaming charges [for the Olympics]," he added. "If you take one or two of those gold medals and melt them down, you might be able to afford them."