* EU states, lawmakers agree wholesale mobile roaming caps
* Last piece of legislation needed for abolition of roamingfees
* Roaming fees to be abolished June 15, 2017
* Smaller operators say caps still too high (Adds comment from mobile operators association)
By Julia Fioretti
BRUSSELS, Feb 1 (Reuters) - European lawmakers clinched adeal early on Wednesday to cap the wholesale charges mobileservice operators pay each other to enable their customers touse their mobile phones in other European countries, paving theway for the abolition of roaming fees in June.
The caps on wholesale roaming charges were the last piece ofthe puzzle needed for the abolition of retail roaming charges on June 15, 2017, to ensure companies can afford to continueoffering roaming within the EU once they can no longer chargeretail customers for the service.
Under Wednesday's agreement between lawmakers and theCouncil of EU member states, wholesale charges for data - whichwere the most controversial given the exponential use of mobileInternet - will be capped at 7.7 euros per gigabyte from June2017, going down to 2.5 euros per gigabyte in 2022.
Caps for making calls will decrease from 5 euro cents perminute to 3.2 euro cents per minute, while those for sendingtext messages will halve to 1 euro cent from 2 euro cents as ofJune, said the Council.
"Goodbye roaming," tweeted Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, the EUlawmaker who negotiated for the setting of wholesale rates onbehalf of the European parliament.
The European Commission - the EU executive - will review thewholesale caps every two years and propose new ones ifnecessary.
Wednesday's deal still needs to be confirmed by the fullEuropean Parliament and all member states.
The decade-long battle against roaming charges took on anadded significance after Britain voted to quit the bloc lastyear in a surge of anti-EU sentiment, making Brussels keen todemonstrate the benefits of membership to ordinary citizens.
"Today we deliver on our promise," said Andrus Ansip,European Commission vice president.
But after the agreement to abolish retail roaming charges inJune this year, policymakers grappled with the challenge of whowould foot the bill as telecom operators still need to pay eachother to keep their customers connected abroad.
The difficulty was compounded by wide differences indomestic prices and consumption patterns across the bloc, makinga wholesale cap that suited all national markets extremely hardto settle.
Countries in northern and eastern Europe where consumersgobble up mobile data at low prices favoured lower wholesalecaps to avoid companies raising prices in their home markets,effectively making poorer customers subsidise frequenttravellers.
However countries in southern Europe where tourism is vitalto their economies worried that if wholesale prices were too lowtheir operators could be forced to raise domestic prices torecover the costs.
While politicians were quick to proclaim the end of roamingcharges, some mobile service operators warned that the wholesalecaps were still too high, which would force smaller operators tolimit their 'roam like at home' offers.
"European citizens expect the end of the roaming surchargesto happen without losing competitive tariffs and innovativeoffers," said Innocenzo Genna, vice-president of MVNO Europe,which represents mobile virtual network operators who do not owna network, such as Fastweb, Sky and LibertyGlobal.
"With the present deal on wholesale caps, they will beheavily disappointed," he added. (Editing by Greg Mahlich)
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