A total of 19 countries in America pledged in Buenos Aires to end the roaming of mobile telephony (roaming charges to users), according to the Argentine Ministry of Modernization.

It is a “will” of all the countries that met in the VII Assembly of the Inter-American Telecommunications Commission (Citel), which signed the so-called Declaration of Buenos Aires with a Plan of Action 2018-2022, whose main goal is the end of roaming.

The Argentine Minister of Modernization, Andrés Ibarra, assured during the meeting that the States have the “duty to generate the conditions so that the citizens communicate without barriers and the deployments so that the operators offer an accessible and quality service”.

READ MORE: Mexico sets a trend to eliminate roaming in Latin America 

If implemented, this improvement in mobile communications will benefit users in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Mexico, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago , Dominican Republic, Bahamas and Barbados.

The elimination of roaming, which was already carried out in the countries of the European Union in 2017, will mean that users can call, surf the Internet or send messages for the same price both from their country and from any of the countries’ foreign signatories.

At the meeting, which was held from March 13 to 15 but whose results were announced today, Argentina assumed the presidency of the Permanent Steering Committee of Citel, an entity of the Organization of American States (OAS).

In addition to the roaming, the delegates of the States talked about reducing the digital divide by promoting regional digital inclusion actions for people who are not digital natives.