Europe caps cross-border cellphone charges
European cellphone users should soon find it much cheaper to text home when they visit other countries in the continent. Regulators have agreed to crackdown on prices, along with measures which may reduce voice call and data charges.
There have long been claims that cellphone companies are charging inflated prices for cross-border texts which don’t reflect the genuine increased costs of carrying the message. Last year the European official responsible for telecommunications policy said firms were charging as much as 32 times their actual costs.
At the moment a text sent from one European country to another costs an average of 0.29 euros. The proposed new laws will cap that at 0.11 euros per message.
Regulators are trying a different tactic with voice calls and data transmission. Instead of capping retail prices, they are limiting how much networks can charge one another for handling international calls, for example a Spanish firm charging a British firm when a British customer phones home from Spain.
The price networks charge one another for voice calls will now be capped at 0.43 euros per minute, falling to 0.35 euros by 2011. Data transmission will be limited to 1 euro per MB, dropping to 0.5 euros by 2011. Firms will, of course, charge customers higher rates than this, but its hoped the cap will allow more competitive retail prices.
The proposals also change the pricing systems allowed for international calls. Firms will now have to charge by the second (with a 30 second minimum) rather than rounding up to the nearest minute. They’ll also have to let customers agree how much they want to spend while abroad and warn them when they are at 80 percent of this limit to avoid nasty shocks when they get the bill.
The changes aren’t law yet as they will need to be approved by both the European parliament and the governments of the 27 countries concerned. However, this is expected to be completed before July 1 when the new laws would take effect. The law may even get full approval next month, which would make it the fastest a proposal has gone from first draft to approved law in the history of the European lawmaking system.
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