Roaming calls swindle continues…
Since the EU regulations on roaming charges within Europe came into force, I’ve been pleased to receive a handy little text from O2 whenever I enter a new country:
Calls to the UK & the EU cost 35ppm and 18pmm to receive (inc VAT). Further info on freephone 2266. Voicemail works as it does in the UK.
Nice, but they don’t tell you one very important thing: While incoming calls are metered by the second, outgoing ones are rounded up to the next minute! I don’t much like spending 35p to hear “This is the voicemail service… [hangup]”. And it’s not much better when you took 10 seconds to say “Where are you? OK. I’ll be there in 5.”
The current regulations agreed in 2007 are due to expire in 2010, but a proposal to extend them in an amended form are currently in progress. While I’m pleased that the call costs are being reduced slightly year on year (although I wonder whether competition is being stifled), these proposals are much more useful:
- Per second billing
- Caps on data usage
Unfortunately the data cap is only for wholesale rates between operators, and starting at €1 / MB excluding VAT this June is still outrageously expensive. By June 2011 it will be reduced to €0.50, but that’s another two years, by which point we will all be even hungrier for data. The other proposal is for a cut off limit so that you at least know that the charges will be within some bounds. Useful, if only because the charges are still so steep.
Let’s hope that this goes though, but also that competition kicks in and we see some more competitive deals, especially for data roaming.
See these links from the European Parliament for more information:
