Shock phone bills to end as roaming download rates cut

SHOCK bills as a result of downloading on your smart phone or laptop when abroad should end today when telecoms companies must warn you as soon as you near €50 worth.

And the cost of making calls and receiving when you are on holiday in another EU country will drop for many mobile phone users from today also.

Since March mobile phone operators had to offer their customers the choice of setting their monthly cut-off price limit for data roaming using their mobile phone or computer.

Now from today operators will have to assume that all customers have a €50 (before VAT) cut-off for data roaming and warn them when their downloads get to €40 worth.

The warning message must be sent by text, email or with a pop-up on a computer screen – depending on the device being used.

Customers will also be offered the choice of over-riding the €50 limit and continuing to download.

The European Commission has imposed maximum prices for data roaming but has set the maximum wholesale price at 80 cents a megabyte of information uploaded or downloaded, from a current price of €1. Next year the price is to fall to 50 cents per MB.

Announcing the cuts, Commissioner Neelie Kroes said they had evidence of exorbitant bills being sent to unsuspecting consumers.

One German traveller downloading a TV programme while in France got a bill of €46,000.

“There will be no more bill shocks for tourists or business travellers surfing the internet with smart phones or laptops while in another EU country. I am determined to make the EU’s telecoms markets more competitive,” she said.

The aim is to have no price difference for anybody using their mobile phones in the EU by 2015.

The latest assault on bills for making and receiving calls and text messages will knock several cents more off your bill as a result of continuing pressure by the EU on the telecoms industry.

In less than four years the cost of an Irish traveller calling home has dropped from €4.76 for a four-minute call to as low as €1.51 last July.

Now it is set to drop further as new lower rates become mandatory cutting the maximum retail price, before VAT, by 10% from 43 cents to 39 cents per minute for calls made, and by more than 20% from 19 cents to 15 cents a minute for calls received.

Voice messages, telling you that a new voice mail has arrived, will be free but consumers will continue to be charged for listening to their mail messages.

Sending short text messages will remain at 11 cents each before VAT. Irish customers saw these costs halved between April and July last year when the last cuts were made.