Roaming charges drop further 1 July

Making or receiving a mobile phone call abroad will be cheaper in the EU from 1 July, but will still cost a lot more than a domestic call. The EU would like to see tariff differences disappear by 2015.

From 1 July, it will cost €0.35 a minute* to make a phone call and €0.11 to receive one. The cost of sending a text message remains at a maximum of €0.11 while it costs nothing to receive one.

Wholesale charges, those operators charge one another, for uploading or downloading data will be capped at €0.5 per megabyte. However, this may not necessarily be passed on to users.

The €50/month limit on surfing the net when abroad remains in place, although users can choose a higher or lower limit. Operators must warn customers when they reach 80% of their limit.

Of course operators can offer their customers better rates than those above. They must message clients about the roaming tariffs each time they enter an EU country.

This latest drop in prices is part of the stepped reduction in the legislation broadly supported by Parliament in 2009. Current roaming rules apply until June 2012 and the European Commission is due to present its plans for the following period next week. The aim is to further reduce prices by strengthening competition among operators. One crucial area is data roaming.

*figures are before VAT