EU ends 'roaming rip-off' with calls, texting and browsing all cheaper

Key changes:

• Sending a text message from abroad will cost a maximum of €0.11.
• Making a call in any EU country must cost no more than €0.43 per minute.
• Receiving a call in any EU country must cost no more than €0.19 per minute.
• Outgoing calls made in any EU country must be charged per second after the first 30 seconds.
• Incoming calls made in any EU country must be charged per second from the start of the call.
• Downloading data will be capped at €1 per megabyte.

Further reductions will follow on July 1st 2010:

• Making a call in any EU country must cost no more than €0.39 per minute.
• Receiving a call in any EU country must cost no more than €0.15 per minute.
• Downloading data will be capped at €0.80 per megabyte (falling to €0.50 from July 1st 2011).

These charges are exclusive of local taxes (VAT).

To further reduce 'bill shock', there will be a cut-off mechanism in place once a subscriber reaches a spend of €50, unless a different limit has been previously agreed.

The new roaming rules will apply until the summer of 2012, although there will be the option to propose further rules if competition has not seen further natural reductions.

What Mobile is keen to add that with the reduction of roaming charges throughout the EU (including special promotions such as Vodafone's 3-month removal of fees completely), calls made and received outside of the EU may increase considerably. It is vital to check your tariff and seek out any special international roaming add-ons/bolt-ons that may give you significant reductions.

It is equally important that you check you are using the correct network when abroad if one of them offers lower rates as a 'partner' network.

At the time of publishing this article (June 29th 2009; 1000 BST) the tourist exchange rate was 1 GPB = 1.1791 EUR

More info:

> EU Roaming Website
> What Mobile EU roaming feature