EC agree on data roaming charges

This year there have been several occurrences of mobile broadband and mobile phone users who have been away on holiday or business, who after coming back home have found a huge bill from their service provider.

However, the European Commission (EC) have been looking into this and their decision has now been published which should put an end to this happening in the future.

The basics are that customers travelling within Europe will receive a message about the data roaming charges when they cross a border into another State.

This means that the customer will then be able to set a limit to their account, which will prevent any future repeats of large bills.

The EC also came up with a flat fee for wholesale data roaming fees. This will be set at 1 euro per megabyte and should allow the providers to be more clear on their charges.

These are just proposals at the moment and need to go through the European Parliament first in order for it to become active.