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01 Mar 2010
European holiday makers and business travellers will be able to set their own roaming charge limits from today.
New rules from the European Union will force mobile phone companies to create a ceiling for mobile phone charges, saving people from coming home to unexpectedly high bills.
"Protection against data roaming bill shocks is a useful step towards building customers' confidence to use mobile networks to surf the internet when travelling around Europe. Such confidence is essential if people and businesses are to use the internet to its full potential," said digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes.
The EU highlighted two cases from last year, one involving a German traveller who watched a TV programme and ran up a bill of £40,000, and a UK student who ran up a bill of £8,000 in a month of roaming abroad.
Under the new regulations mobile firm companies must offer a monthly cut off limit of €50 (£45), and users will be sent a warning when they reach 80 per cent of their chosen limit.
Customers need to make a deliberate choice in order to benefit from a cut-off limit until 1 July 2010. Those who do not make a choice by this date will have the cut-off limit set at €50 by default.
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HEAVILY CHARGED FOR SENDING OUT DATA IN FOREIGN COUNTRY
I am from Singapore. I recently visited Ho Chi Ming City with my family on free and easy tour in April 2010. Whilst there I sent out email messages including a few images, photos for a couple of days. When I returned to my homeland I found I have choked up a bill of S$2,600.00. ! I was shocked beyond words! My personal air-fares to and from Vietnam only costed S$400.00. I am a 70 year old retiree living on a meagre pension. I did clarify with our service provider on roaming charges using my Apple 3G(S) i-phone b4 setting out to Vietnam. I was told its ok, I would be charged on normal `auto-roaming' charges. Fortunately, after putting up some `struggles' (also with the kind assistance of our Spore authorities) and over many `sleepless nights', my Bill was empathetically reduced to around approximately S$1,000.00. I suffered a `TIA' 4 years back. Fortunately I did not suffer a fatal stroke this time round when I received this Bill. To me, it looks like people are taking full advantage of advanced technology to commit `plunder' or `cyber-robbery'. It just takes two co-horting countries (ie. two agreeing cross-border service providers) to fix`plundering' rates over the use of sending cross-border data over the internet. Something the world over has got to be done to protect the pecuniary interests of unwary net users. Amen!
Posted by: Clement Tan 08 Jun 2010