European Rules Lower Cost of Mobile Use Abroad

Inflation may be driving prices up elsewhere, but at least making calls using your mobile phone abroad when travelling in Europe will be cheaper from this month, although the price of text messaging remains affected.

Anybody going on holiday in Europe this summer should already have been looking forward to cheaper roaming deals, but the lower prices are now in place and as of last Friday, calls made and received in Europe will be a little cheaper.

Effective from July 1, the new European rules cap the cost of making a call while elsewhere in Europe at €0.42 per minute (around 38 p), as opposed to €0.47 currently, while receiving a call will cost a maximum of €0.13 per minute (around 12 p) in place of the current cap of €0.18 per minute.

The cost of sending an SMS while abroad remains unchanged at €0.13.

The European Commission wants to see prices fall even further so that by 2015 there will be no difference in cost between calls made at home and those made abroad.

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