The European Union has laid out a new set of rules for mobile phone users wandering over the hills and plains of Europe in a move that should see bills slashed by around 60 per cent.
Anyone who’s used their mobile phone in Europe will have experienced the pain of the wallet draining bill when you get home, but the new rules will see text message charges cut to €0.11 (before VAT), a substantial reduction on the current €0.28 rate.
Data roaming charges have also been reduced from an average price of €1.68 per megabyte downloaded to €1 per megabyte. The pricing will still make surfing sites abroad a painfully pricey process, although an optional automatic cap of around €50 should hold back the horror bills.
From July, mobile phone calls will be capped to at €0.46 for calls made and €0.22 for calls received, going down to €0.39 and €0.15 on in 2010, before dropping further to €0.35 and €0.11 by 2011.
EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding was clearly chuffed with the deal struck for consumers, commenting, “The new roaming rules have passed the very last procedural hurdle and will now bring instant benefits to consumers as of July 1.”
“This is great news for European citizens who will be able to go on holiday this summer and roam with peace of mind and without the fear of ‘bill shocks’,” she added.
It’s a shame that we’re still waiting for the truly monstrous roaming charges in the US to be brought down from their current stratospheric, may extra terrestrial levels.
It’s one thing to strut around with the latest do-it-all, cloud-accessin’, web-surfin’ super-smartphone on your travels, but it’s bugger all use if you’re too scared to get the thing out of your pocket for fear of being hit with a Cadillac-sized bill.
Comments
2 responses to “EU Cuts Euro Roaming Charges”
Mobile roaming charges slashed…
There’s good news coming out of Brussels (don’t say this to anyone who voted UKIP) regarding mobile phone roaming charges. From July the cost of using your mobile phone abroad could be slashed by a whopping 60%.
Rules drawn up by the EU mean that th…
[…] There’s good news coming out of Brussels (don’t say this to anyone who voted UKIP) regarding mobile phone roaming charges. From July the cost of using your mobile phone abroad could be slashed by a whopping 60%. Rules drawn up by the EU mean that the costs of a text will be cut to around 10p (€0.11 to be precise) down from the usual 25p – although I know from experience O2 charges 35p. The costs of calls has been reduced too, although the ridiculous practice that you pay for calls received as well as those made still applies – albeit with price reductions. The cost of a call made will be cut to €0.46 a minute (work it out in pence yourselves, you lazy so-and-sos) and calls received will be €0.22 a minute. These prices will be further reduced in 2010 and 2011. The cost of web browsing is still astronomical whilst abroad though so unless you’ve got plenty of dosh, avoid this. Prices have been reduced, but only to €1 a MB, meaning a song streamed from last.fm or a video watched via YouTube is still going to cost you a few quid. Alternatively, sign up with Vodafone’s Passport scheme and receive free roaming for three months this summer. You simply pay the usual UK charges – have a read of this post from last month for more details. Or go direct to Vodafone. (via Digital Lifestyles) […]