Carriers hike non-EU roaming rates: study

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - European wireless carriers have sharply raised prices for making and receiving calls outside the European Union to compensate for regulator-imposed lower tariffs within the EU, a market research firm said.

Informa Telecoms and Media said on Friday roaming charges had risen as much as 163 percent since the EU capped rates last year at 0.49 euros ($0.76) a minute for making calls abroad in the 27-nation bloc and 0.24 euros for receiving them.

The average price of a call home by an Italian subscriber in Russia was 3.67 euros a minute in 2006, but this has risen 25 percent to 4.58 euros, Informa said.

For customers in most European countries, the cost of roaming in Africa, China, India, Japan, the Middle East, Russia and the United States has risen, the Informa data showed.

There are exceptions however -- roaming in Russia became 36-40 percent cheaper for customers from Germany and France.

For British subscribers, roaming rates were flat or fell 6 to 10 percent.

Angela Stainthorpe, the report's author, said the British market was very competitive with five operators. 3 UK, owned by Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, was also aggressively marketing its low-cost offers.

"It is mainly 3 UK which is bringing the price down so significantly against everybody else's," she said.

(Reporting by Niclas Mika, Editing by Richard Hubbard)