Roaming Fees in EU to Soon Be Lowered

There is good news for those living in the European Union. The EU Parliament is reported to work on lowering the roaming fees within the region, while amending the 2007 roaming regulation, which lowered the voice roaming charges in EU to €0.46.

The new decision of the Parliament sets the new fees at €0.40 for outgoing voice calls, and €0.16 (plus VAT) for incoming calls. In addition, it seems that operators are not allowed to apply any initial talking minimum for the calls, like the charge set for the initial 30 seconds, although one might talk less than that, and instead they should charge by the second.

In addition to the new lowered fees for voice calls, operators should also set new price caps on SMS messages and data roaming fees. Thus, SMSs will be charged only €0.11 plus VAT per message. When it comes to data roaming, there is a maximum price that the host operator is allowed to charge. The decision sets the price cap at €0.50 per megabyte. At the same time, the charges should be calculated per kilobite so that there won't be hidden costs. In addition, the roaming voice mail messages are free while abroad.

According to the decision, there will be some sort of a soft “cut-off limit” for roaming data services, meaning that a user who reaches up to 80 percent of a limit agreed in advance will be informed about this either via e-mail or pop-up. At the same time, when the limit is reached, users will need to go through a certain procedure that ensures they are willing to pay more on additional roaming fees.

The Industry Committee decision seems to not be the final one at the moment, and the Parliament’s plenary session still has to approve it, after negotiating with the European Commission. If it gets approved, the regulation will be applied starting July 1, 2010.