moneysupermarket.com: Decision to cut mobile roaming charges

Commenting on the EU and members of the European Parliament reaching a final decision on cutting mobile roaming charges, Rob Barnes, head of mobiles at moneysupermarket.com, said:

"Today’s decision from Brussels is long overdue. However, while the new deal looks great when you compare it to existing costs of between 55p and 94p per minute, the EU seems to have backed down when faced with stiff opposition from UK and European operators.

“The average cost of making a mobile call in the UK is between 3p and 10p per minute when on a contract, yet calling home from another EU state will be up to 33p per minute.

"Networks have stalled for too long on lowering their roaming costs. For example, last May, Vodafone said it would reduce the costs of calling the UK* from abroad but it is yet to introduce the discount it promised. Vodafone and O2 have introduced bundle deals that give customers the opportunity to reduce the cost of calling, but these only apply to those who subscribe to the service.

“Operators have also continually hidden behind the defence of having to pay 'other' European operators to carry calls in the relevant countries. Yet providers such as T Mobile and Deutsche Telekom are the same company, as are Orange and France Telecom. It is about time they are held accountable to mobile users.

"Costs will be forced down over time but it seems we are a long way from fair call charges throughout Europe with the likelihood operators will offset reduced European call costs with increases in other areas.”

The new charges probably won’t come into force until August. In the meantime consumers should consider:

purchasing a local country or global SIM card. This is consistently cheaper than calling via one of the UK networks and could bring the cost of making a call from Europe down to just 22p per minute, with no charge to receive calls.

contacting your network before you travel and finding out the costs of making and receiving calls there.