EU to scrap roaming SMS charges
The EU may dabble in black magic most days, but every so often it has a good one, and today looks promising. Viviane Reding, the EU telecoms commissioner, has stated that “EU citizens should be free to text across borders without being ripped off”, and effectively wants to remove the cost of inter-country SMS communications. Another step towards a more unified EU. She also had this to say:
“Roaming charges have already drained the wallets of mobile customers too much. It is not a good sign for the competitiveness of Europe’s mobile industry that it still hasn’t got the message that credible price reductions are needed to avoid regulation.”
Currently, roaming SMS may cost up to 63p (over $1). It looks like the EU will rule to cap any inter-country txt message communication inside the EU to 12 Euro cents (around 10p or 20 cents US). This is already the standard rate for sending text messages for UK citizens to other UK based devices. However, the catch is often when roaming oneself, whereby it can cost to receive text messages since whoever is sending things to you might not realise you are outside of the country. This fee will also be removed.
Although no official dates or times were given to back-up the announcement, the EU commissioner also stated that roaming data prices would be dealt with soon, because no one wants a £31,000 phone bill.
[Via BBC]
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[...] EU has really started throwing its weight around recently. Following the announcement that it will no longer be tolerating inflated SMS rates between member countries, nor stupidly high data charges for downloaded mobile content while [...]