September 29 (SeeNews) - Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Macedonia signed an agreement on Monday to gradually reduce their roaming rates to the tariffs applicable in the European Union (EU), the Serbian telecommunication ministry said.
The agreement envisages gradual reduction of roaming service prices in the four countries within the next three years, the Serbian telecommunication ministry said in a statement on its website, following the signing ceremony.
Albania and Turkey were not part of the deal due to uncompleted local procedures, Serbian telecommunications minister Rasim Ljajic was quoted in the statement.o
Ljajic added that Serbian citizens pay five times more for roaming voice calls per minute while sending text messages is three times costlier, which was the reason for the initiative.
The European Union introduced a cap on roaming prices in September 2007 and the rates have been decreased every year since then. Currently, the maximum charge for outgoing voice calls is 0.19 euro ($0.24) per minute, value added tax (VAT) excluded, and for incoming ones is 0.05 euro.
($=0.7853 euro)