EU Capping Mobile Phone International Roaming Data Charges
Written by Christian Milsom on July 6, 2010 · Filed under Tech
That’s right, in a story that really ties in with our recent article about mobile phone contract users paying too much for their tariffs from what we’ve seen from the results of a recent survey, along with the fact the impending summer holiday season, the European Union (EU) have today introduced regulations that aim to help the more confused customers by placing a cap on the amount that users can spend whilst roaming abroad.
This has been introduced in an attempt to stop users unwittingly running up bills of hundreds or even thousands of pounds (as has been the case in recent years) due to increasing use of international calling and internet data usage – although some mobile networks do have promotional deals sometimes, such as Vodafone’s cheap roaming promotion last summer, but obviously these are just special offers and you can’t normally rely on these kind of cheap deals always being available when you travel.
The EU have set this roaming charge cap at a value of €50 (excluding tax) and it will result in users being warned when they come close to this limit, and ultimately not being able to browse or download after they have reached this limit. You will be able to lift this automatic cap but you will have to contact your operator in order to do this – and seeing as it is in their interest to let you I can’t imagine this will be especially difficult to do!
Unfortunately this will only apply when roaming within the EU although we can always hope that the operators take it on board and decide to apply it to all international roaming charges – although I suspect the chances of that are pretty small!
This sounds like good piece of mind for people using their mobile phone abroad, at least within Europe, althought surely once you’re past the €50 point of acceptance for further charges, you could still end up racking up hundreds or even thousands of Euros/Pounds? Surely it would be better to have several levels of cut-off? Or is this bit of a non-issue for most people?
But with people using more internet-based services on their smartphones these days on handsets such as the iPhone 4, the chances of larger numbers of people incurring larger internet roaming bills will surely increase? Do you use mobile phone roaming when you go on your holiday? Or do you think the whole point of going on holiday is to get away from it all?
Let us know what you think!
Via – Techwatch
I have just returned from a European cruise. My normal tariff is £8.51 plus vat, yet my bill on return from holiday was £344.77. You can imagine my surprise! I contacted T Mobile immediately, as although I expected my bill to be higher since I was visiting Europe, I was not expecting this amount. My bill shows ‘non-EU’ billing, i.e. Norway, Gibralta, Croatia, etc. However, I pointed out that I only visited EU countries but they won’t accept that. What can I do?