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EU: Single Market (EUC Report)

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, for bringing this report to our attention. As always, he has chaired the committee with tremendous clarity and has brought us an outstanding report. I also thank the staff, who have done such a magnificent job. With regard to the title, The Single Market: Wallflower or Dancing Partner?, I have to say that, whatever attributes I may have as a human being, dancing is not one of them; in the ballroom, I am afraid I am on the side of the wallflower. My noble friend Lord Haskel made various points about the European Union, and there is something else that we must celebrate today. I heard on the radio that as of this morning the gross national product of the European Union has exceeded that of the United States. That may be due to the fact that the dollar has been plummeting and the euro has been going up but, looking back over 60 years since World War II, it would be as well for us all to reflect on what an amazing achievement it has been to get to that point. What I have to say concerns one area which always interests me—that is, mobile phones and roaming charges. I was brought up with a jolt some time ago when, having sold my company, the first thing that I had to do was get a mobile phone because previously it had been paid for by the company. I never thought about the bill as someone else had always paid it. I paid the normal tariff on my phone and, after the first month of using it when I had been travelling, I had an enormous bill, most of which related to calls that I had made on the Continent. I am normally good at judging what prices will be but that bill made me speechless. Therefore, I have a vested interest in this report. In March 2007, Sub-Committee B published a superb report entitled Mobile Phone Charges in the EU: Curbing the Excesses. It mentioned the size of roaming charges in the EU being €5.4 billion, which by any measure for the network operators was a nice little earner. No wonder they fought so hard to ensure that nothing was done to curb that success. However, Europe had a phenomenal result, which I am sure was helped by what we were doing and in the summer of 2006 mobile phone roaming charges were reduced by at least 70 per cent. I could not help but laugh as when that happened the mobile phone operators told everyone on their phones how wonderful they were that they were reducing the price, concealing the fact that they had done it through gritted teeth. That is marketing for you. Commissioner Viviane Reding has done a phenomenal job. She is to be lauded for what she has done. She pushed very hard and it was a great victory. The main point of my speech does not concern voice usage on mobile phones, as I believe that battle has been won and in Europe voice usage is probably saturated. Most people have a mobile phone and there is not much more market in which to sell mobile phones. Also, people will not use mobile phones more for voice because they use them as they use them. The big growth area at which all the operators are looking is data. First, SMS texting came to the mobile phone operators like manna from heaven. They did not know it was going to occur; they did not know there was a market; and suddenly that market is huge. One only has to look at children standing at a bus stop, or wherever, to see that they are all texting each other all day long. It has become an amazing method of social communication. As much as some of us may detest it, as a parent there is nothing better than that welcome bleep-bleep to tell you that your child has got home or is safe. It is amazingly reassuring. Commissioner Reding addressed a conference in Barcelona on 11 February this year and talked about data costs and how they need to be reduced. She drew attention to the fact that data costs, even for texting, are 20 times more outside the home country than within it. That is quite amazing. The real growth is not just in texts but in downloading of data, to which I shall turn a minute. She said that national regulators are unable to address those issues unilaterally. Noble Lords may not know but the cost of downloading a megabyte of data is €7. On my computer I can download a megabyte of data in two seconds. Were that on a mobile phone, that would cost €7 and mobile phone connections through 3G will go at similar speeds. That is an example of highway robbery and a total rip-off by the operators. I want to talk about what data are. I am the proud possessor of a device called an iPhone, produced by Apple. It happens to be a phone but it is an awful lot more. It has e-mail, internet browser, share prices, YouTube, maps, on which you can find your location, and now movie downloads and music downloads. Noble Lords will know that for young people today social online networking is a key aspect of their lives. They do it all the time and the phone is a key area for that. Those same people use their phones on holiday in Europe, and I am sure that they use them with gay abandon until they come home and look at their bills. The roaming charges are key, and where Apple have gone Nokia and BlackBerry will follow, as will all phone manufacturers. I am trying to convey to your Lordships that the growth in the future will be in data, and data are totally and completely unrestricted and not subjected to the rules that were agreed in 2006. We are delighted that the Minister bangs the drum for European business and may he continue to do so for a long time. I would like to feel that that same drum is also being beaten for the benefits of the European consumer, because the European consumer in the data area deserves a fair deal.