Vice president for the digital agenda at European Commission Neelie Kroes encourages mobile users to roam

As the functionality of mobile devices has grown, so have user expectations, according to Neelie Kroes, vice president for the digital agenda at the European Commission. And key among those expectations at present is the ability to use mobile applications and services everywhere.

″We need to make sure these devices can travel,″ Kroes told attendees at iDate's DigiWorld Summit 2011 on Wednesday, where she spoke via video message. ″[We need] mobile to be made mobile,″ she said. ″High roaming prices can make people wary of taking their devices abroad,″ she warned.

Earlier this year Kroes made a series of proposals designed to shake up the European roaming market and address ″roaming rip-offs″ for consumers.

One proposed that consumers be permitted to sign up to a dedicated roaming contract, separate from their regular mobile plan, but retaining their phone number. Mobile network operators would be required to give access to these alternative operators – effectively roaming MVNOs – at regulated wholesale prices.

15 years ago, mobile phones were still cutting edge, ″but they were for talking and perhaps texting,″ Kroes said on Wednesday. Now a mobile device is effectively a ″digital Swiss army knife″, incorporating an address book, camera, media player and so on, she said. And they must be usable everywhere: ″That is what consumers expect.″

Kroes also touched on the issue of spectrum and the proposed radio spectrum policy programme that would see the establishment of a five-year spectrum policy programme that would, among other things, ensure there is sufficient spectrum made available for mobile broadband services in Europe. ″[The policy] sets the framework for the future,″ Kroes said, describing it as ″a big step forward″.

Kroes also called for attractive content to be available to users across Europe ″without 27 different rule books″, and emphasised the importance of all the players in the mobile value chain – infrastructure, devices and content players - working together going forward. ″No one part of the Internet ecosystem can survive without the others,″ she said.