The cost of making a call or sending a text message while roaming in the EU is to be reduced again from tomorrow.
The price of calls made while abroad is to come down from 39 cents to 35 cents per minute (ex-VAT) while the cost of calls received is to drop from 15 cents to 11 cents per minute for calls received.
Receiving a voicemail message while roaming will be free, but consumers will be charged 11 cents per message sent.
Consumers also no longer need to be quite so concerned about running up huge bills when going online via their phones or other devices while overseas as a new data-roaming price cap of €50 (also ex-VAT) is also coming into force.
Under the new rules, mobile operators will have to send users a warning when they reach 80 per cent of their data-roaming bill limit and are forced to cut off connections once the €50 limit has been reached unless informed otherwise by customers.
Tomorrow will also see a fall in maximum wholesale prices for data roaming from 80 cents to 50 cents per megabyte. The EU is expected to introduce data-roaming services retail caps shortly.
According to the European Commission, the cost for roaming calls has fallen by more than 70 per cent since in 2005, when the EU first started to tackle excessive charges. The cost a text message is 60 per cent less than it was six years ago.
However, European Commission vice-president for the digital agenda Neelie Kroes said this week that while prices have come down considerably since the adoption of roaming rules in 2007, competition is still not strong enough among mobile operators to provide better rates to consumers.
Ms Kroes said retail prices still tend to cluster around the EU regulated maximum price caps with few operators prepared to offer better rates to consumers.
A Eurobarometer survey published earlier this year showed that despite a 13 per cent fall in travel between 2006 and 2010, the overall volume of calls received and SMS sent while abroad in the EU has grown. Travellers report making 32 per cent more calls, receiving 31 per cent more calls and texting 43 per cent more since 2006.
However, the research indicates that 72 per cent of travellers still limit their calls when overseas because of high roaming costs. In addition, just 19 per cent of people who use internet-related services on their mobiles think the costs of data-roaming are fair.
That research also found that Irish people are more likely to send text messages when overseas than citizens in other EU member states.
Ms Kroes said earlier this week that she wants to reduce the difference between roaming and national tariffs to zero by 2015.
