MINSK, 21 June (BelTA) – Eastern Partnership Initiative countries will sign an agreement by the end of 2020 to harmonize roaming rates. The relevant agreement was reached during another round of the Eastern Partnership informal ministerial dialogue in Minsk on 21 June, BelTA learned from Belarusian Communications and Informatization Minister Sergei Popkov.
“Today we've decided that a roadmap of the Eastern Partnership Initiative countries will be worked out by the end of the year and an agreement on harmonizing roaming rates in our countries will be signed by late 2020,” said the official.
The communications and informatization minister pointed out that it had taken the European Union ten years to resolve the problem. “We are not saying it will happen tomorrow and everything will be cheaper right away. We are saying that roaming rates will be gradually reduced to approach the level of domestic rates as much as possible,” he specified.
Meanwhile, it will be necessary to strike a balance between interests of mobile carriers, which need to grow and invest in the development of new technologies, and interests of regular citizens, believes Sergei Popkov.
In turn, Alexander Zhivotovsky, Chairman of the National Commission for the State Regulation of Communications and Informatization of Ukraine, explained that Eastern Partnership Initiative countries will be able to use the agreement to be signed in 2020 in order to start negotiations on signing a similar agreement with the European Union.
