Euro MPs rubber stamp cheaper holiday calls and texts
Only 10p to text from Poland
Euro MPs have ratified plans to lower the price of using your mobile phone abroad, agreeing a cap for texting calling and data charges.
The plans, which were put forward last month but needed the rubber stamp from the European bigwigs, which was overwhelmingly agreed today.
Among the agreed changes was an €0.11 cap on text messaging (10p), which is a big plunge as it currently stands at about 26p per text on average at the moment.
Overwhelming
European MPs voted on the matter with 646 in favour and 22 against, and are designed to rid the news of the 'shock bills' stories where clueless punters are charged thousands of pounds for failing to find out how much it cost to use their phone abroad.
As such, the cap for data roaming will be set at €1 per MB of data (around 92p) and a data cap to be agreed between customer and network to halt the massive bills.
The charge caps were put forward last month, where TechRadar brought you all the information on the future charge drops, with roaming costs likely to come down year on year for the next three years.
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EU Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding said that operators would still be able to operate with good margins after the cut, meaning that the big networks will have to find alternative ways to drive revenue from holiday makers.
Via BBC
Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grew with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.