EU to cut cost of roaming mobile phone texts & data

December 1st, 2008

Swimming Sculpture - Tower Bridge - Friday 21st September 2007
photo: law_keven

BBC News reports that the EU is set to introduce a upper cap on the cost of sending texts or accessing data from July 2009 whilst roaming within the EU.

The rules put a retail price cap of 11 euro cents (9p) on texts sent while roaming - a substantial cut on the European average of 29 euro cents (24p). The ministers backed a cap of 1 euro per megabyte (83p) on the price of downloading data - though this applies only to the charges operators levy on each other.

Also included in the rules is a mechanism that will allow for connections to be cut if a data bill hits 50 euros (£41).

What this means is that if you use your mobile phone on your next summer holiday in any of the EU27 states, texting and downloading data should be cheaper. Just last year, the EU capped the price of roaming phone calls to 34p/min for making a call and 17p/min to recieve a call.

Now, usually I’d be all for anything which cuts the cost of mobile telephony but I’m really not sure whether this is good news for the consumer. Since the EU introduced a cap on roaming call costs, my mobile phone company (O2) changed the way they charged calls so that they were rounded up to a whole minute. So you get charged 25p if you reach somebodys answerphone and hang up after 2 seconds. And whilst it would cost me 34p/min to use my phone in France, it still costs me 40p/min to call somebody on another phone network. That’s slightly silly.

Crab nebula
photo: koolkao

Similarly, the price cap on texts seems to be a bit silly. The EU proposes a maximum price of 9p per text. In the UK, the typical price for a text on PAYG is 10p and 12p on contract. In other words, the EU are going to make it cheaper for me to use my phone abroad than at home. It is true that sending a text message costs more than getting data from the Hubble Space Telescope but surely the legislation should also cover the cost of domestic text messages.

(As an aside, heavy PAYG texters should make sure they are on the O2 Online tariff or the Orange Dolphin tariff. Both offer free texts by the tonne when you top up.)

Similarly, the EU want to set a cap of 83p per MB for data. I agree that the £3/MB currently charged on domestic data is too much but common sense would again dictate that domestic data shouldn’t cost more than international data.

If you’re going abroad, carefully check the price of roaming before you leave. For example, an O2 price loophole means it costs 49p to send a text but only 25p to send a MMS message when abroad (outside the EU). Seeing as MMS messages can contain both pictures and text, you can save money by sending a MMS message even if you don’t send a picture.