Mobile roaming caps in place July 1

Mobile roaming caps will be enforced next month to reduce the roaming charges that are incurred when travelling throughout Europe, but the Council of the European Union has now granted an extension that will include pricing limits on data services, voice calls, and SMS by 2010.

The new deadline for the roaming caps will be enforced as of July 1st.

The move aims to balance charges for travellers, who face high roaming rates for using mobile services that are inexpensive in their own country compared with travelling throughout areas included in the European Union.

Viviane Reding, the EU Telecoms Commissioner, said that this will help out European citizens who are taking a holiday, so that they do not have to worry about shocking roaming mobile bills.

Also included in the plan are tools that are accessible to customers so that they can monitor and see how much they have spent while travelling and using their mobile devices.

The control devices will also impose a cap so that consumers do not spend too much on roaming charges.

Caps on outgoing roaming calls will drop from 37p to 33p and incoming calls which currently cost no more than 16p will cost no more than 13p and eventually no more than 9p.

Text messages will be capped at 9p and mobile data services will drop to 86p per megabyte in July, 69p by 2010 and down by more than half to 43p by 2011.

For users who are not travelling outside of their own region there will not be a change in mobile bills.