Household Bills
Overseas mobile calls could shrink
Written By:
Your Money
Posted:
Updated:
10/02/2006
The cost of using a mobile phone abroad could be cut by up to 20 times under proposed new EU rules.
Viviane Reding, EU telecoms commissioner, said in Paris that she planned to issue a draft regulation in April that would require international roaming charges to be no higher than the cost of using another operator’s network while the user was still in their home country.
The rules should come into effect next year. Making plain her exasperation and frustration at the failure of previous efforts to cut bills, she told the European Regulators Group: “Consumers continue to pay unreasonably high prices for using their mobile phone abroad.”