* Roaming charges set to end in June 2017
* EU seeking to agree "fair use" policy to prevent abuse
* Customers with unlimited data will face limits abroad
By Julia Fioretti
BRUSSELS, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The European Commission hasproposed putting limits on how much consumers with unlimiteddata packages can surf the web abroad before they have to payextra once roaming fees are abolished.
The European Union has committed to getting rid of roamingcharges within the bloc by June next year but has struggled tofind a way of giving consumers a fair deal without puttingmobile operators under undue financial pressure.
Fearing that packages offering unlimited data could be proneto abuse, and prompt companies to raise prices at home to recoupthe cost of surcharge-free roaming, the Commission said it hadproposed an "exceptional brake on intensive roaming".
"Without a volume safeguard on roaming, these competitivepackages will be threatened on domestic markets. They coulddisappear or become more expensive, or be offered withoutroaming. We do not want that," EU Commission Vice-PresidentAndrus Ansip told a news conference on Thursday.
Member states are expected to vote on the new proposal onMonday.
The EU's decade-long drive to abolish roaming charges, oftenseen by consumers as excessive compared with the additionalcosts of providing the service, has been hampered by bigdiscrepancies in domestic prices which operators say makeentirely free roaming uneconomical.
The quandary has been compounded by the wholesale chargesoperators pay each other to keep their respective customersconnected when abroad.
The EU is now rushing to lower caps on wholesale chargeswhile agreeing a "fair use" roaming policy to prevent abuse, buthas been finding it hard to strike the right balance.
Eager to shore up support for the EU amid a wave of populistanti-EU movements, the Commission abruptly withdrew an earlierproposal to let users roam free for up to 90 days a year afterit was criticised as being unfair to consumers.
Under the new proposal, the amount of free data roaming forconsumers with unlimited or very cheap bundles would becalculated by dividing the price they pay at home by thewholesale cap, and then doubling it.
For example, a Swedish citizen paying 20 euros per month athome for unlimited data, with a wholesale data cap of 10 eurosper gigabyte, would get 4 gigabytes free before charges kick in.
A Commission official said most packages in member statessuch as Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal would not be affectedby the volume limits, given the domestic bundles were lessgenerous.
"It's very, very unlikely that the consumer will go anywherenear that amount of data consumption," the official said. (Reporting by Julia Fioretti; editing by David Clarke)
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