Telecoms: Italy

After more then 15 years of paying 5 € each time the buy a recharge from their mobile operators, Italian consumers might get some help from the NRA, which might soon ban such a practise, estimated to be worth 1.7 € bn a year for the mobile network operators.

In a country where more the 90% of mobile subscribers are on pre-paid, the ‘recharge’ fee is a massive business for mobile network operators, that all had so far applied the typical 5 € fee for each recharge. For ages, almost nobody complained loudly and both the National Regulatory Authority and the Antitrust Authority did not seem to care.
All of sudden, an ordinary (actually not so ordinary!) citizen called Andrea D’Ambra was able to start on online campaign promoting a petition to both the NRA and the European Commission to scrap the recharge fee altogether. Currently, more than 600.000 consumers signed the online petition.
This fuelled an official investigation by the NRA, which is expected to force all mobile operators to change their habits of constantly apply the 5 € fee to all their pre-paid customers.