Last September's proposals to cut mobile roaming charages across Europe have been passed by the European Parliament. Jon Wilcox reports.
The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favour of amending the 2007 regulation for mobile phone roaming charges. 646 MEPs voted in favour of the amendment, which lowers roaming costs for phone calls, text messaging, and data roaming, with 22 MEPs voting against the measures, and 9 abstaining.
From 1 July 2009, phone call roaming charges will be reduced to a maximum of €0.43 per minute for outgoing calls (exclusive of VAT), and €0.19 per minute for incoming calls (exclusive of VAT). An annual staggered reduction will take place in 2010 and 2011, which will eventually see maximum outgoing and incoming calls fall to €0.35 per minute (exclusive of VAT) and €0.11 per minute (exclusively of VAT) respectively from 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012.
From 1 July 2009, the cost of sending roamed SMS text messages will drop from the current average of €0.29 to €0.11. The new regulations will also see the introduction of new roaming data transfer caps, with a maximum of €1.00 per megabyte (excluding VAT) from 1 July 2009. This will drop further from 1 July 2010 to a maximum of €0.80 per megabyte (excluding VAT), with a final reduction from 1 July 2011 to a maximum of €0.50 per megabyte (excluding VAT).
Roaming customers will also have the ability to opt into a maximum financial limit from March 2010, which the European Parliament hopes will prevent the number of so-called ‘bill shocks’ as a result of roaming charges. The new regulation stipulates that mobile operators will have to warn customers when they’ve reached 80% of the agreed limit.
The new proposals were first unveiled by the European Commission in September 2008.
