EU mobile users promised further roaming caps

Travellers should pay a maximum of 37p per minute to make a phone call abroad

The European Committee on Industry, Research and Energy has announced that it wants to cut the maximum cost of roaming mobile calls to €0.40 (37p) per minute by the summer of 2010.

The current rate of €0.46 (42p) excluding VAT to make mobile calls while abroad, set by the industry in 2007, is due to expire at the end of June 2010.

Under the new Eurotariff travellers should pay a maximum of €0.40 (37p) per minute to make a phone call abroad, €0.16 (15p) per minute to receive calls and €0.11 (10p) per text message. The committee also said that from 1 July 2010 at the latest, consumers should no longer have to pay to receive a roaming voicemail message while abroad in the EU.

Following a vote of 21 in favour, eight against and 18 abstentions, the amendment was passed and will be valid until mid-2012.

Several of the amendments are contrary to those laid down by the European Commission (EC). Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted against an EC proposal to gradually lower the retail price caps further between 2010 and 2013.

MEPs also want the price regulation to expire by 30 June 2012, whereas the EC wanted to extend it to mid-2013.

The amendments also say that the home mobile provider should not apply any initial minimum charging period, meaning that operators must charge roamed calls by the second from the first second of each mobile call made or received abroad. The EC wants per-second billing to come after the first 30 seconds.

Mobile data charges are also to be regulated at the wholesale level, with a price cap dictated on the rates that the host operator charges a roaming customer's home operator.

The EC had set this limit at €1 (92p) per megabyte, but MEPs felt that this was too high and proposed a limit of €0.50 (46p) per megabyte. MEPs also want data roaming charges to be calculated on a kilobyte basis in order to help users better manage costs.

To help people to avoid exorbitantly high bills on their return home, the EC is suggesting that a cut-off limit should be offered by providers, allowing customers to set a threshold at which data roaming services would be cut off.

However, to avoid unexpected cut offs at critical times, MEPs stipulated a gradual approach, whereby the provider warns the user when they have reached 80 per cent of their limit and again when they reach their limit. This warning should also include a set of procedures for extending the limit.

In the coming weeks, a team of MEPs led by Adina-Ioana Vălean will start informal negotiations with the European Council's presidency to reach a compromise on the proposal before the European Parliament's first reading at the 21 to 24 April plenary session.