EU adopts roaming charges cut

Using a mobile phone to send text messages or surf the internet via a laptop will be up to 60 per cent cheaper while travelling in the European Union under price curbs adopted by the European Parliament today.

The caps take effect in July and are being adopted rapidly as EU parliamentarians, facing an election in June, want to show how the bloc can make a positive difference to the daily lives of its nearly 500 million citizens.

EU regulators and the executive European Commission want to end "bill shock", when business travellers or holidaymakers return home to huge charges for checking emails or surfing the Web while away.

Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan welcomed the decision saying “customers should not have to pay exorbitant prices for using their mobile phone in the EU.

“The EU has been opened up in recent decades and we are all travelling more frequently. It is absolutely right that as active EU citizens, those in all member states pay broadly similar costs," he said.

"Using your mobile phone abroad in the EU should not cost unjustifiably more than at home, whether for making calls, sending texts or surfing the Web," EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said in a statement.

"Europe's 37 million tourists and 110 million business travellers are waiting for the promise of the borderless single market to finally have a positive impact on their phone bills."

Operators will be allowed to charge customers a maximum of 11 cents per roamed text (SMS) message, excluding sales tax, compared with current prices of about 28 cents.

Downloading data while roaming will cost a maximum of €1 per megabyte at the wholesale level, compared with about €1.68 today.

The new legislation will extend by three years to 2012 price caps that were introduced in 2007 on roamed voice calls - or when mobile phone users make or receive calls outside their home state in the EU.

Previous legislation had left out text messaging and data downloading, such as checking emails on a laptop or mobile phone while outside a home state.

Ms Reding decided to propose a second measure to plug these gaps and to extend caps on roamed voice calls.

The European Parliament and EU states have the final say, and reached an informal deal last month which parliament is set to adopt into law today.

Additional reporting Reuters