News from Welsh Labour

“Red letter day” for cheaper calls and texts in Europe approaches

Wrexham’s Assembly Member, Lesley Griffiths, is urging all Welsh mobile phone users who are intending to visit Europe next week, to mark Wednesday, 1st July on their calendars, as the day roaming costs for texts, calls and data downloads across the EU will be slashed by up to 60%.

The AM is welcoming the move which sees the introduction of the new roaming rules which will substantially cut the cost of texting and surfing the internet with your mobile phone while abroad and further reduce roaming caps for calls, made and received while abroad in the EU.

The new roaming rules which will be directly applicable within the EU as of 1 July 2009 are as follows:

* Introduce a ‘Euro-SMS tariff’ limiting the price that consumers can be charged for sending a text message while abroad to €0.11 excluding VAT (compared to an average of around €0.29 today) which will lead to consumer savings of around 60%
* reduce the cost of surfing the web or downloading movies with a mobile phone while abroad by introducing a wholesale cap of €1 per MB downloaded
* will protect consumers from “bill shocks” by introducing a cut-off mechanism once your bill reaches €50 (unless the consumer opts for a different limit)
* further reduce prices for mobile roaming calls now capped at €0.46 for calls made abroad and €0.22 for calls received abroad (per minute and excluding VAT)
* introduce the principle of per-second billing after the first 30 seconds

Commenting, Lesley Griffiths AM said:

“This is great news – not just for those people planning to go to on holiday this year within the EU but also for the many thousands of Welsh people who work in Europe or are on business in other EU countries.

“The EU began addressing the issue of overcharging by European mobile phone operators back in 2007, when caps for calls made and received while travelling in the EU were introduced and this led to substantial savings for consumers of over 40 percent.

“The new roaming regulations being introduced on 1st July will bring even greater saving for consumers and this is to be greatly welcomed.

“These days, travel within Europe is commonplace for both leisure and business purposes. Add to that our increasing dependence on mobile phones to stay in touch and get online, it is important that phone charges are kept to a minimum.”

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