High-flyers say goodbye to whopper phone bills as the EU caps roaming charges

EUROPEAN TRAVELLERS WILL no longer have to pay roaming charges for using their mobile phones within the EU after the bloc reached a deal that will take effect in June.

The hard-won accord is a key element towards delivering the long-delayed “free roaming” promise first made by Brussels with great fanfare in early 2015.

Mobile roaming charges for EU consumers will end on 15 June, enabling them to call and transfer data across borders from another EU member state for the same cost as at home.

“This was the last piece of the puzzle,” said Andrus Ansip, the European Commission’s vice-president for the Digital Single Market.

The overall deal still needs final approval by the European Parliament and member states but this is expected to be a formality.

Delayed

The plan was initially delayed when angry telecoms operators in tourist magnets such as Italy and Spain complained of the deal’s knock-on effects and threatened to hike domestic prices to pay for travellers from northern Europe using their networks.

They complained that “free roaming” would in effect make poorer Europeans in the south pay for wealthy tourists phoning home or surfing for data while on holiday.

Roaming charges have long been a lucrative source of extra income for telecoms companies.

Holidaymakers in Paris

To solve the issue, negotiators for the European Commission, the European Parliament and the EU’s 28 member states agreed on a scale of wholesale charges telecom operators pay each other when customers use their mobile phones abroad.

In a move that angered consumer advocates, the commission in December said “free roaming” would have some limits to ensure there was no abuse of the new system.

Telecoms operators would be able to closely track usage and crack down on users unfairly taking advantage of cheaper phone deals available in other EU countries.

Lower caps for data transfers would enable EU consumers to access more audio-visual content when travelling from a country to another. This could also open up markets for small and virtual telecoms operators.

The European Parliament and Council agreed on the following caps:

• Just over three cent for voice calls
• A gradual decrease for internet usage, from €7.70 per gigabyte from 1 June to €2.50 per gigabyte by 1 January 2022
• One cent for text messages

Additional reporting by Conor McMahon.