Mobile phone users will experience “significant savings” while roaming in Europe following the approval of a cap on roaming rates by a European Parliament committee, Irish MEP Seán Kelly has said.
An agreement to cap mobile roaming rates for consumers, reached between the European Council and European Parliament last month, was approved by the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy yesterday.
Mr Kelly said the Roaming III regulation would lower charges for downloading data or using mobile internet services abroad and would result in significant savings for consumers from July 1st onwards.
“The new rules oblige operators to lower the cost of calls made while abroad to 29 cent per minute, text messages sent to 9 cent and 70 cent per megabyte of internet access downloaded.
“The costs will be further reduced by 2014, with call charges at 19 cent per minute, text messages at 5 cent and 20 cent per megabyte for data,” he said.
Mr Kelly, who is a member of the committee which voted in favour of the agreement, yesterday said the committee had also approved a ceiling cap on the cost of receiving calls while abroad.
The measure will now be adopted at the plenary session in Strasbourg in May, and is due to be endorsed by the European Commission thereafter.