Lower phone tariffs kick in across EU[fr][de] 

Mobile phone calls made from one EU country to another are now capped at €43 cents per minute, down from the previous limit of €46 cents. The cap will be further lowered to €39 cents from July 2010 and to €35 cents from July 2011. 

Taking VAT into account, the new prices for making roamed calls are now €49 cents from UK or Spanish numbers, €51 cents from Italian, French or German numbers, €52 cents from Belgian or Finnish numbers and €53 cents from Swedish, Danish and Hungarian ones.

Mobile phone users are also set to benefit from lower charges for receiving calls while abroad. These fees will be capped from the current €22 cents per minute to €19 cents per minute (VAT excluded). Moreover, a new cap has been introduced for roamed text messages, which now cost a maximum of €11 cents (VAT excluded). Receiving a text message abroad will remain free.

Operators are of course allowed to offer lower prices than the maximum EU charges, although in practice this was seldom the case when the EU's first roaming regulation entered into force in 2007.

Data roaming 

More good news for European consumers came with the introduction of a price cap on data roaming to prevent so-called 'bill shocks' for mobile Internet users while abroad. In a recent case, a German citizen received a €46,000 bill for downloading a TV programme while on holiday in France.

The new regulation sets a €50 limit on data roaming per month (excluding VAT). Once a customer has reached this amount, the mobile operator will send a warning message, giving details of a procedure for continuing data roaming. Should the user fail to respond, the operator must automatically cut the service once the cap is reached. Users are of course free to set higher caps.

Partial per-second billing system 

Telecoms operators, however, managed to avoid being obliged to charge per-second tariffs right from the beginning of a phone call.

Currently, most operators impose per-minute tariffs for roamed calls, a practice which ends up billing customers for 24% more time than they actually spend on the phone, according to the European telecom regulators group (ERG).

The new rules will allow operators to impose an initial charging period of a maximum of 30 seconds, after which the per-second system will be applied. This means that if an operator wants to exploit this advantage, a roamed phone call lasting 15, three or 27 seconds will always be charged as though it had lasted 30 seconds.

"The roaming-rip off is now coming to an end thanks to the determined action of the European Commission, the European Parliament and all 27 EU member states," said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding. "I expect the new EU roaming rules to make it much cheaper to surf the web on your mobile while abroad in the EU. For now, EU rules are limited to reducing inter-operator charges. I call on the mobile industry to pass these savings on to data roaming customers swiftly."

MEP Adina Valean (ALDE, Romania), the European Parliament's rapporteur on the new roaming regulation, declared: "I welcome the fact that some operators have reduced roaming tariffs even before the entry into force of this regulation, while some are proposing summer offers for their roaming customers. This is very good news for competition and the consumers. The cost of making and receiving calls, sending text or MMS messages and surfing the Internet have decreased in recent years, but there is room for more."

GSMA, the association of the world's main mobile phone operators, warned the regulation would potentially harm the telecoms sector. "In the European Union, the average price of domestic mobile phone services is falling by 13% per annum. In such a competitive market, price regulation is not necessary and is potentially damaging. A short-term political agenda should not take precedence over the long-term economic impact of regulation," said David Pringle, a GSMA spokesperson.

Monique Goyens, director-general of BEUC, the European consumers organisation, said: "Prices closer to real costs, clear and transparent information before the surprise, no more bill shock. A little bit of clarification, and a few additional measures add the perfect finishing touches to this positive and rapid proposal."