RSSExpensive roaming is history in EU this July
By Tim Conneally | Published April 22, 2009, 3:34 PM
The European Commission's quest to end "roaming ripoffs" on text message and data charges incurred while roaming in the EU has come to a triumphant end.
The European Commission's proposal (PDF available here) to cap wholesale data roaming rates and roaming text costs was approved by the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council in December and was approved yesterday by the European Parliament.
The average cost for a roaming text message in the EU is currently €0.29; under the new regulations it will drop to €0.11 on July 1, and wholesale data roaming fees will be capped at €1 per megabyte.
Additionally, Parliament went ahead and offered further cuts to roaming voice calls. The outgoing call charge will drop from €0.46 per minute to €0.35 per minute, and incoming will drop from €0.22 per minute to €0.11 per minute. Charges are also required to be measured by the second to prevent from costly round-ups.
EC Commissioner Viviane Reding said the updated laws will save consumers more than 60% on their roaming bills.
Great, now it's cheaper to send a message to another country than sending to Spain from Spain.
L0L
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|Roaming charges in the EU have been very high for far too long. Every time the EU investigates, the phone companies whine that they will be broke if the charges come down, yet they turn in huge profits every year.
I used to work in the mobile phone business - at the server and billing system end of it. It always was a money machine.
The system uses "toll-tickets" to track each call (basically one ticket for each base station used during a call - as you move around during a call, you switch automatically to the nearest base station). The tickets are collected and the total call cost is calculated. When roaming, the toll-tickets are passed down the line to the user's home country (i.e. service provider). This is the only additional cost involved in roaming calls. The local call cost and exchange rate is handled beforehand via agreements between service providers (a bit like how overseas mail is paid for. Note that unlike mail, no physical handling is required). Calls and text messages are handled in exactly the same way. The cost for a roaming call/text is only marginally higher than for a domestic call. The high charges are therefore nothing more than money-grabbing.
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|I come from one of the poorest countries in EU (Romania) and this news makes me proud I'm EU citizen.
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|Well, I am a EU citizen too (The Netherlands), and I am so happy that I don't live there any more. However, I should say that, some of their regulations really make sense and the US should follow them.
And the EU market is far more competitive than the US market could ever be.
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