Britons using their mobile phones abroad will save nearly £600million a year as a result of new rules to be introduced in two years’ time.
ROAMING REFORMS
The European Union has announced that from June 15, 2017 when you travel to another country within the union you will pay the same rates for calling, texting and surfing the internet on a mobile phone as you do in the UK. If you pay a monthly tariff for a package of calls, text messages and data usage, any activity clocked up in another EU country will count towards that allowance. At the moment such activity does not count towards monthly usage and incurs additional charges. Despite a fall in costs in recent years these charges amount to £573 million a year, according to comparison website uSwitch.
CURRENT COSTS
At present, if you travel to another European Economic Area country (the 28 EU countries, plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), the additional costs for using your phone abroad are capped. Excluding VAT, outgoing calls are capped at 19 cents (15p) a minute or 5 cents (4p) a minute to receive a call. Sending a text should cost no more than 6 cents (5p) while data usage is capped at 20 cents (16p) a megabyte. One megabyte is the equivalent of looking at five or six web pages. These costs will fall in April next year to 5 cents a minute for calls (both incoming and outgoing), 2 cents a text, and 5 cents a megabyte of data, again excluding VAT. But prices are far higher outside the EU. Networks apply a €50 (£35.50) monthly data usage cap wherever you are in the world. After this you can no longer consume data. You must actively opt out of this if you want to use more data on your phone. Be aware that if you buy a travel package with your network in advance, you could be opting out of the €50 cap – so always check first.
To find out how to save money when using your mobile abroad check out our article Avoid Holiday Bill shock.
