The European Union is going to end roaming charges by 2017

The European Union reached a preliminary deal on Tuesday to scrap mobile roaming charges across the 28-country bloc by June 2017 as part of an overhaul of the continent's telecoms market to boost growth and innovation.

"Under the agreement, roaming surcharges in the European Union will be abolished as of 15 June 2017," Latvia, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said in a statement after 12 hours of talks with EU lawmakers.

The European Commission (EC) said in a public statement the decision means that from 2017: "If you pay for a monthly volume of minutes, SMS and data in your country, any voice call, SMS and data session you make while travelling abroad in the EU will be deducted from that volume as if you were at home, with no extra charges."

Until then the move will be a gradual process that sees the European Commission (EC) work to reduce the additional charges operators add when customers use smartphones and tablets overseas.

The EC hasn't given a firm time frame how much it will reduce costs each year, but has pledged that from April 2016 operators will only be able to add an additional charge of up to €0.05 per minute of call made, €0.02 per SMS sent, and €0.05 per MB of data used when customers are roaming.

The decision builds on the work of former EU telecoms commissioner Neelie Kroes (pictured above). The EC said it had hope to have abolished roaming charges earlier, but couldn't due to technical restraints.

"Because a number of steps have to be taken in order to make the end of roaming charges sustainable throughout the EU," explained the EC.

"The wholesale roaming market (the prices that operators charge each other for the use of their networks) needs to be thoroughly reviewed before the end date."

On the controversial issue of net neutrality, the EU plans to order telecoms operators to treat all Internet traffic equally and that blocking would only be allowed to counter cyber attacks or during peak periods.

Companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telecom Italia had lobbied to have more leeway to tap into a potentially lucrative source of revenue but Internet activists say this could create a two-speed Internet benefiting companies with deep pockets.

Net neutrality has been an increasingly heated topic across the world. Prior to the EC's announcements French rights advocacy group La Quadrature du Net (LQDN) expressed concerns about the political body's net neutrality plans.

Specifically LDQN claimed a leaked EU presidency document proved the political power held an "unacceptable disregard on the part of member states for the commitment of the EU Parliament and many EU citizens to uphold the principle of net neutrality".

Over in the US, President Barack Obama has made several moves to protect net neutrality. Obama asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to protect neutrality practices by internet by reclassifying the services as a utility in November 2014.

Günether H. Oettinger, commissioner for the digital economy and society, welcomed the roaming and net neutrality reforms arguing:

"Both are essential for consumers and businesses in today's European digital economy and society. We will build on these important foundations in our forthcoming review of the EU's telecoms legislation."