THE COST of using mobile phones abroad will be significantly cut under regulations approved by the European Parliament yesterday.
The measure capping the amount which mobile operators can charge customers roaming in other EU countries will come into force on July 1st.
For the first time the EU is capping the price of data or mobile internet use to prevent “bill shock” – bills of thousands of euro which customers have received as a result of surfing the internet or downloading music while abroad.
Prices for sending e-mails or browsing the web while roaming on a mobile network will be capped at a cost of €1 per megabyte and will be reduced to 50 cent per megabyte by 2011.
This compares to a current charge of, for example, €10 per megabyte for many Irish O2 customers roaming abroad. A typical pop song is three to four megabytes.
Another strategy for preventing bill shock is setting an automatic limit of €50 for data and forcing networks to alert a customer when they have almost reached their limit.
The new call ceilings are 43 cent a minute for outgoing calls, compared with 55 cent for Irish Meteor customers at present. The cap will be 19 cent a minute for incoming calls, compared with the current 29 cent for Irish customers of mobile operator 3.
These will be reduced to 35 cent a minute for outgoing calls and 11 cent for incoming calls by 2011.
Operators will also have to bring in per second billing so customers are not charged for time they do not use.
Text messages are also set to be capped at 11 cent per text compared with around 29 cent for Irish Vodafone customers.
The 3 network welcomed the move but criticised the legislation for not going far enough in the capping of wholesale data prices. The network would like to see the data cap at 25 cent rather than 50 cent.
Meteor said it would seek to bring in the transparency elements as soon as possible.
Fianna Fáil MEP for Dublin Eoin Ryan welcomed the decision. “After a family holiday or business trip many people get a nasty surprise when they get their bill. This compromise sets price ceilings beneath which mobile operators could compete by offering lower prices,” he said.
More transparency for customers is also being introduced by legislation as operators will be obliged to send customers a text when roaming with the prices and the EU 112 emergency number.
EU commissioner for information society and media Viviane Reding said she did not believe that prices would be increased for domestic customers to counteract the reduction in roaming prices.
However, the MEP who headed the regulation, Adina-Ioana Valean, said she feared operators might find some way to raise prices and the measure would be monitored.
The cap will remain in place until 2012.