The biggest European electronic communications regulators' event so far held in Belgrade, the two-day 42^nd Plenary meeting of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) and General Assembly of the Independent Regulators Group (IRG) finished today in Belgrade.

The meeting was attended by more than 30 countries, while among the discussed topics were the safety of 5G networks and elimination of roaming charges in the Western Balkans.

From the second half of next year onwards, the regional roaming fees are expected to disappear, with political and expert discussions regarding a total elimination of roaming charges between the EU and our region being the next step, said the director of RATEL, dr Vladica Tintor.

"The process of the EU roaming price reduction lasted for almost 10 years, resulting in "roam like at home", with no roaming charges between the EU countries", explained dr Tintor, reminding that the Republic of Serbia, applying the EU methodology for elimination of roaming charges applied between the EU Member countries, reached an agreement first to reduce and then to completely eliminate our regional roaming charges.

The director general of the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, Dan Sjöblom, who is chairing BEREC in 2020, said that the organization supports the initiative to fully eliminate both roaming charges in the region and between the region and the EU.

"We are familiar with the initiative present in the Western Balkan economies. Although we cannot provide you with the exact dates in this moment, we extend our support and are going in that direction", said Sjöblom.

Representatives of the countries participating in the Belgrade meeting highlighted the issue of information security in 5G networks as one of the most important topics discussed during the Plenary, since this technology is being implemented in numerous countries, including Serbia.

"These are the future networks expected to be deployed in Serbia as well, as of next year. A great number of people will communicate via these networks, but even more significant is that a great number of devices will communicate by means of these networks, which is one of the novelties introduced by the 5G networks – mutual communication of devices", explained the director of RATEL.

The compliance of both service providers and users with the decisions of the regulators and experts is of utmost importance, in order to avoid undesired situations.

Among the topics discussed during the two-day Plenary sessions were the BEREC International Roaming Benchmark Data Report on Western Balkans, Draft BEREC Guidelines on very high capacity networks and Draft BEREC Guidelines detailing quality of service parameters of Internet Access Services.