At its regular meeting on Wednesday, the Bulgarian government approved amendments to the Electronic Communications Act, which would cap EU roaming charges starting from April 30.

The amendments are aimed at aiding the application of the actions foreseen in the Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council of the EU for equal and nondiscriminatory treatment of traffic in the provision of internet access services and related endusers' rights.

The regulation foresees the abolition of surcharges for regulated roaming services (outgoing voice calls, SMS, data transfer, including MMS).

According to the regulation, starting from 30 April 2016 roaming charges (without VAT) could not exceed EUR 0.19 per minute for calls (outgoing voice calls), EUR 0.06 per SMS message and EUR 0.2 per megabyte of internet used.

Starting from 15 June 2017, Bulgarian users will pay the national prices of these services regardless of the EU member state in which they are using the services, meaning that no surcharges will be applied.

The draft foresees sanctions for providers attempting to block, delay, limit, interfere, worsen the quality or discriminate the specific content, applications or services accessible via internet.

Member states are obliged to adopt rules regarding the introduction of proportional, effective and deterring sanctions in cases of breaching the regulation as well as to take measures to ensure its implementation.