A plan to end roaming charges in the EU has been passed by the European Parliament.

The new regulations will outlaw the unpopluar fees from June 2017.

From April next year, mobile operators roaming charges will be limited to 5c a minute for voice calls and 5c for each megabyte of data.

Fine Gael MEP Sean Kelly says telecoms operators have been dragging their heels on this:

Meanwhile, the European Parliament voted against a package of amendments to internet rules.

The proposed rules would have required internet providers to treat their customers' web traffic "without discrimination, restriction or interference".

The proposals had been supported by companies such as Netflix, Vimeo, Kickstarter and Reddit.

New regulations, which had been previously accepted, will oblige firms offering internet access to treat all traffic equally "unless this is necessary to obey court orders, comply with laws, prevent network congestion or combat cyber-attacks".

However the Parliament says service providers will also "be able to offer specialized services (such as the improved internet quality needed for certain services), but only on condition that this does not have an impact on general internet quality".

The rejection has been criticised by net neutrality proponents, although some critics had said the proposals were riddled with loopholes.

Barrister and net neutrality advocate, Ronan Lupton, explained the proposals on Newstalk Breakfast this morning.

"What we've seen obviously now in this particular environment is that data is a huge commodity - so you could imagine if someone's providing access to the internet that they may say 'look, I'm going to bill you for your access to Google on a separate basis to the rest of the access to the internet that you may undertake'" he said.

"That is obviously a discriminatory type of behaviour, and the piece of legislation pending before parliament today is designed to try and stamp out that type of behaviour" he added.