Anonymous sources within the European Commission say that within the next couple of weeks, they’ll be pushing to lower the pricing cap on voice, data, and texting charges while roaming within the European Union. This is a cause the EU has been championing for years, and though there has been significant progress last year when the maximum roaming charge in europe was set to 50 euros, there’s still a lot left to be done. The new proposal would aim to bring the top voice roaming rate down from 39 cents per minute, to 24 – roughly a 40% drop. Under the same upcoming legislation, the cap on texting would be dropped by 1 cent. From what I gather, data roaming is still set at 1 Euro/MB tops.
The main issue here is to prevent “Bill Shock”, a sentiment shared by the FCC on this side of the pond too. Obviously carriers that span many European nations, like Vodafone and Telefonica, are interested in hanging onto these roaming charges, but it seems like the tide is not turning in their favour.
This is good news for Europeans, since it doesn’t take much for them to be traveling internationally. Even here in the North America, it feels like there should be something more reasonable when moving between the United States and Canada. Any Euopeans in the house have terrible experience roaming abroad with their smartphone?
[via Reuters]