Data roaming charges in Europe to fall by over 50% as Commission drives towards eliminating all fees

The cost of using your phone while abroad is set to fall by up to 50 percent from July 1 as part of the European Commission’s (EC) continued push to cut the cost of mobile roaming within Europe.

Following on from last year’s cost-cutting exercise which imposed new limits on operators that capped the price of calls, texts and data, the EC has announced that another drop in these caps will be put into place from July 1.

So, while calls are currently capped at a maximum cost of 24 euro cents per minute, that will fall to 19 cents per minute. Perhaps better than that though, the per MB charge for data is set to fall to 20 euro cents before tax, down from 45 cents. The full breakdown of changes can be found below.

As part of the new rules on roaming, operators will also be able to offer users decoupled services (thereby allowing you to use a local network for your data, but your existing package for calls, for example) from this date.

Although this is obviously progress and significant steps have already been made since 2012 when the agreement to reduce costs was finally sealed, the EC has since revealed its Connected Continent draft regulation which looks on course to see the abolishment of roaming charges within Europe altogether by the start of 2016.

➤ Huge cuts in mobile data roaming price caps from 1 July – a drop of over 50% from last summer! [European Commission]

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