Mobile Roaming Charges In EU Cut By Up To 75%

Using your mobile phone within the European Union is significantly cheaper from today, as a new law to cap costly roaming charges comes into force.

Under new rules, operators will only be able to charge a maximum premium of 3p per minute on top of what a customer would normally pay to make a call in the UK.

A fee of 1p can be added for text messages sent in the EU, while the top surcharge per megabyte of data will be 3p.

The European Commission says the cap will make using a phone within EU up to 75% cheaper ahead of the complete abolition of roaming charges in June 2017.

When these fees are phased out, mobile phone users will pay the same price to make calls, browse the internet and send texts wherever they are in the trading bloc.

The tighter regulations were introduced in an attempt to end the eye-watering bills some consumers have received after using data abroad without knowing how much it costs.

In some cases, Britons have been charged many thousands of pounds for downloading films and TV episodes after exceeding their data limit abroad.

Andrus Ansip, vice president of the European Commission, said the move was "not only about money but about bringing down barriers in the digital single market".

According to uSwitch, "bill shock" after holidaying in the EU has been affecting more than nine million UK mobile users every year.

Some fear the abolition of roaming charges will prompt mobile operators to raise their domestic prices to offset lost profits.

But Matt Howett, a telecoms analyst at Ovum, told Sky News: "In the UK, we benefit from intense competition between mobile operators - it's one of the most competitive markets in Europe, if not the world.

"I think there is pressure on operators to prevent them raising prices in any meaningful way, but I think we need to realise that we can't expect prices to fall forever."