EU reduces roaming charges across Europe today, makes data 36 percent cheaper and teases further cuts

Starting today, anyone hopping between EU member countries with their smartphone will see roaming charge caps substantially cut across networks and services. As promised by the EU Commission's VP Neelie Kroes last week, new price caps will drop call charges by "at least 17 percent," while receiving calls are reduced by 12 percent per minute starting today. Text message costs are down 11 percent, while (perhaps most importantly) data charges across networks in Europe have been cut by 36 percent, down to 45 Euro cents per MB -- 91 percent cheaper than they were in 2007.

The commission says it has managed achieve price reductions of over 80 percent across mobile services in the last six years, but it isn't done there. Further price caps are promised for the same time next year too, as you can see after the break, with roaming data charges set to be further halved (down to 20 cents) by July 2014, with voice calls and text charges also seeing further, admittedly less substantial, reductions. Now, let's see how the EU fares on those ridding the old country of throttled data speeds.

Image credit: Die Bundeskanzlerin

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Source: Europa (EU), @NeelieKroesEU (Twitter)