Roaming prices to go down in Europe

The European Parliament has voted a substantial price cut on roaming services. As of 1 July, a minute of outgoing roaming calls in the union will cost no more that €0.43 and a maximum of €0.19 if you’re on the receiving end. This is a small price cut from the current tariffs of €0.46 and €0.22 respectively. However, the price cuts are to come July 2010 and 2011, ultimately going down to €0.35 per minute for outgoing and €0.11 per minute for incoming roaming calls.

We find the unified SMS roaming tariff of up to €0.11 per text message more interesting. In effect as of 1 July 2009, the new price is significantly lower than the average at the moment. The same holds true for the newly added price caps for data roaming services that will be fixed to  a maximum of €1.00 per MB with further price cuts to follow in 2010 and 2011 until a level of €0.50 per megabyte has been reached. This is a very sizable drop, considering the fact you may end up charged €3.00 per megabyte depending on your carrier now.

The Parliament has also voted an amendment that states that as of July 2010 consumers will no longer pay for receiving voicemails in roaming.

The new price caps are bound to make some operators rather unhappy, but will hailed by travelers across the continent. As for our opinion – we’re always happy when we get more talk for our bucks.

Note: all prices exclude VAT

source: European Parliament via UnwiredView