February 19 (SeeNews) - The countries of the Western Balkans plan to sign an agreement for lowering the roaming fees for their citizens in April, a Serbian government official has said.
The agreement will be signed during the Western Balkans Digital Summit 2019 that will take place in Belgrade on April 4 and 5, state secretary at Serbia's trade and telecommunications ministry Tatjana Matic said on Monday, according to a press release issued by the ministry.
"Serbia is committed to engaging with other partners in the Western Balkans in the preparations for European integration, and one of the important steps is to lower the prices of roaming," Matic was quoted as saying during a meeting of representatives of the telecommunication ministries of Serbia and North Macedonia in Skopje.
The European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel who attended the meeting said she expects the agreement to be signed in April.
In May 2018, Gabriel said she expected the roaming fees in the Western Balkans to be significantly lowered in 2019.
"As of the summer of 2019, the roaming price will stand at 0.70 euro ($0.79) per megabyte. A year later, in 2020, the price will fall to 0.45 euro and in 2021 it will be further reduced to 0.20 euro," Gabriel said back then.
At the end of 2014, the telecommunications regulators of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Macedonia signed an agreement to lower prices of roaming for their citizens. The lower roaming prices were introduced on June 30, 2015.
($ = 0.885387 euro)