United Kingdom citizens traveling abroad will finally get some relief from excessive roaming charges when using their mobile phones abroad. An agreement has been reached by all of the European Unions largest Mobile providers to cap rates at .11 for texts and voice messages.
British residents routinely receive what is known as mobile bill shock upon returning from holidays abroad to discover bills for mobile phone usage while away are astronomical. These charges were especially extreme when using a phone to download a photo or video with a simple photo download costing several pounds. UK users often are faced with data downloads costing almost 50 pounds. New rules for billing will create automatic cut offs on data charges exceeding set limits. This is presumably to protect systems operators in EU nations such as the Czech republic.
Telecom ministers for the Czech republic protested the new rules as being too constrictive on operator profits. Some stated that the new rules would force Czech roaming systems providers to find “other” ways to supplement lost revenues. Regardless of protest from nations one might regard as less then scrupulous, the new rules and prices should go into effect in July of 2009.
