METEOR HAS become the first mobile phone operator in Ireland to abolish roaming charges for its customers travelling within Europe.

The move will see the cost of making calls and sending texts on the network while overseas fall by more than 50 per cent.

Meteor’s customers will be charged the same for calls and texts while abroad in the EU (plus other destinations including Norway & Iceland) as they are at home, although they will have to register to take advantage of the discounted roaming rates.

The company claimed the policy shift would lead to its customers paying more than 60 per cent less than Vodafone and O2 while roaming.

The new charges will apply to both pay-as-you-go and bill-pay customers, although customers will not be able to use their bundled minutes while roaming.

For pay-as-you-go customers, the cost of making calls within Europe will fall to 29 cent per minute while sending a text message will cost 12 cent.

Customers with bill-pay contracts, meanwhile, will be charged 25 cent per minute to make calls and 10 cent to send a text. There will be no charge for receiving calls.

Company spokesman Bill Blake described the move as “groundbreaking” and said it was timed to coincide with the start of the summer.

“Our customers will no longer have to worry about paying more for calls and texts while in the EU, with the added benefit of being able to receive calls from family and friends for free,” he said, adding that the company’s customers had said that the roaming charges which previously applied were “not acceptable”.

The company also announced that its roaming data rates will fall drop from €10 per megabyte downloaded to 99 cent.

“The wholesale rate for data in Europe at the moment is 80c per Mb so we’re dropping our charges by 90 per cent,” Mr Blake said.

“Obviously as this price continues to drop we’ll be hoping to pass that on to consumers but we’ve unfortunately not been able to bring it in line with domestic rates just yet.”