European Commissioner for Digital and Frontier Technologies
The European Commissioner for Digital and Frontier Technologies is a member of the European Commission responsible for media and information issues such as telecoms and IT. The current officeholder is Henna Virkkunen since December 2024.
The portfolio was previously Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society. Mariya Gabriel served as Digital Economy and Society Commissioner from 2017 to 2019.
Viviane Reding
Viviane Reding found a relatively popular policy in seeking to lower roaming charges of mobile phones when travelling within the European Union, stating: "For years, mobile roaming charges have remained unjustifiably high. We are therefore tackling one of the last borders within Europe's internal market". Her legislation to cap roaming charges was approved by the Parliament in April 2007. Reding's successor Neelie Kroes greatly extended the range of the roaming regulation, to include data charges among others.On 7 April 2006 the commission launched the new ".eu" TLD for websites for EU companies and citizens wishing to have a non-national European internet address. This has proved popular with 2.5M being registered by April 2007. It is now the seventh most popular TLD worldwide, and third in Europe
Reding has also proposed that major European telecom companies be forced to separate their network and service operations to promote competition in the market. The companies, including France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, would still own their networks but the separate management structure would be obliged to treat other operators on an equal basis in offering access to the network. This is opposed to separate ideas to force a full break-up of such companies.