Lots of people now have flat-rate data plans for their phones, but these plans usually aren't flat-rate when you're in a foreign country. Using data while abroad has traditionally been very expensive, but the EU is now trying to introduce caps on data roaming charges. Under the plan, data roaming charges would be capped from July 2009 at 1 euro per megabyte, falling to 50 cents per megabyte by July 2011. As these are caps phone networks could charge less of course, but they could not charge more.
Read on in the full article.
Just a financial footnote for people in Britain: 1 euro a megabyte might look expensive for anyone converting this into UK pounds, but that's partly because the pound is so weak right now.
A lot of prices in the UK are extremely cheap by Eurozone standards, for example a Nintendo DS console costs about 100 euros in the UK but 150 euros in the Eurozone, even though they originally started out with pretty much the same price level.
if I'm not mistaken between OfCom and the EU we have managed to progress on unlocking phones, reductions on roaming (voice and text) and now data. I wish the financial world had better regulation 😉
I don't think Ofcom had anything to do with that one; it was the Eurocrats getting pissed-off with having to swap SIMs every time they moved between Strasbourg and Brussels, or simply got too close to a border.
From a UK contract user: one euro per megabyte doesn't look expensive to me - in fact it's cheaper than my corporate contract data at �1 per megabyte. There must be a lot of users on a deal like mine, I know at least 1200 others.
From a UK contract user: one euro per megabyte doesn't look expensive to me - in fact it's cheaper than my corporate contract data at �1 per megabyte. There must be a lot of users on a deal like mine, I know at least 1200 others.
It would be ironic if it ended up cheaper to use a foreign SIM card through roaming in the UK... 😊