MOBILE PHONE roaming charges are to come down further and companies will be forced to inform customers when they have spent €50 on calls abroad, following an agreement by EU ministers yesterday.
The EU has already forced mobile phone companies to reduce their rates for calls made abroad but yesterday's proposal involves text messages and downloading information from the internet for the first time.
Texting will come down from a current average of 29c to a maximum of 11c, before VAT, from next July. A maximum wholesale charge of €1 will be levied for every megabyte of data downloaded.
The cost of making a call abroad will also come down further from a maximum rate of 46c as of this year, to 43c next July, to 34c by July 2012. The cost of receiving calls abroad will go down from 22c this year, to 19c next July, and eventually 10c in July 2012.
Mobile phone companies will also have to bill customers for calls while roaming by the second from the 31st second of a call to stop the current practice of firms charging by the minute.
Operators will have to give customers the option of continuing their roaming when their bills reach €50.
"It shows that Europe is first and foremost supposed to be there for its citizens," said Viviane Reding, the EU telecoms commissioner who put forward the proposal in September.
Eamon Ryan, Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, said the proposal was important since the EU had been discussing stimulating the economy and reducing the costs of technology would do that.
"Irish consumers are going to notice it in their pockets," he said.
Ministers also approved reform of the regulation of the telecommunications industry which will see a regulatory body set up to co-ordinate decisions across the EU, and national regulators given the power to separate telecoms operators into business units to boost competition.
However, ministers rejected an European Commission proposal to give the executive the power to veto national regulators' decisions which did not boost competition sufficiently and to give the regulatory body powers to override national regulators.
Mr Ryan said Ireland, Sweden and the UK had been in favour of bringing in greater reform than what was approved by ministers yesterday but that the package was a step in the right direction.
Ms Reding, however, said she was "disappointed" at the outcome. " I believe that the council is not going far enough to support the efficient use of this essential national public resource."
