MuniWireless

Europeans going on holiday this summer will get a very pleasant surprise: lower roaming charges. Viviane Reding, EU telecoms commissioner, is happy to announce that that roaming rip-off is now coming to an end.

Beginning 1 July 2009, the new roaming charges are:

• €0.11 for sending a text message;
• up to €0.39 for making a call;
• up to €0.15 for receiving a call from another country.

To prevent “bill shocks”, once a customer’s bill reaches 50 EUR, the customer will be warned via SMS if he wants to exceed the cap. From now on,  people will be warned before they incur hundreds of Euros in mobile phone charges.

As for data roaming, the EU has imposed a wholesale cap of €1 per megabyte, going down to €0.80 in 2010 and €0.50 in 2011. These are the prices that the carriers charge one another, not the prices they charge the end user.

Although the telecom operators fought hard against the new regulations, Reding and the European Parliament continued pressing for lower rates, to the benefit of mobile users throughout the EU.

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