This week the EU Parliament has voted in favour of abolishing mobile roaming fees and maintaining net neutrality. While US lawmakers have generally favoured corporate entities on these matters, this show the European Union’s tendency to share forces with consumers.

So what’s the deal on this with regard to e-invoicing? Well, not much at first glance. But let’s focus on the roaming fees.

The end of roaming fees for mobile Internet

Under the new EU laws, each of the 28 countries in the European Union will have to phase out mobile roaming fees (i.e. price you have to pay when you use your mobile phone outside your home country) by Christmas 2015. It is expected that both the use of mobile Internet will spike as everyone (including tourists from outside the EU)  will be able to then continue to use their own free/cheap internet access based on your local/national contract as you travel around Europe.

So, the EU boosts mobile internet adoption and use by scrapping roaming fees. Just imagine what would happen if roaming fees in e-invoicing would be abolished? As we all know, there is a certain amount of providers that use roaming fees to open up there network

What to think of these scenario’s:

• E-invoices become a mere utility
• E-invoicing as such creates not enough revenue to remain profitable for providers in the long run
• E-invoicing providers need require innovative new services to remain profitable
• E-invoicing adoption will spike (but not only by abolishing e-invoicing roaming fees)

Or is there a possibility that roaming fees will persist through years on end as these reflect a royalty rate for the value of each network(address)?