Jane Bradley: Easing the pain of roaming costs on your phone

PUT your hand up if you feel lost without your smartphone – and all the gadgets that go with it. Yes, almost all of you.

Thought so. These days, most of us view 24/7 access to the internet as a fundamental human right. And for most people, that right is cruelly snatched away when we travel abroad.

Indeed, when trying to tempt us to splash the cash on a new phone, the adverts woo us with images of beautiful people wandering around European cities, using their smartphone to seek out the best local tapas bar and locate their hotel in one click.

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Unless we are among the super-rich; find ourselves in a dire overseas emergency or simply are blissfully unaware of roaming costs, no-one in their right mind would consider switching their mobile data on when abroad.

By activating internet facilities for just a few minutes, you can easily run up a bill of hundreds of pounds as your phone helpfully automatically downloads all of those junk emails, daily messages from GroupOn and vital Facebook messages posted by your friends during your time away.

But help is on its way. New regulations put forward by the EU this week could spell the end of the ludicrous roaming charges currently operating within the EU.

The charges – dubbed “superfluous” by consumer groups, but which account for about 7 per cent of revenue for some telecoms companies – are justified by networks claiming they have to work just that little bit harder to route a call or a message to the phone.

The cuts will see major reductions in wholesale roaming charges, which lawmakers hope would be passed on to the consumer.

Should the plan be given the go-ahead, from July this year, consumers will be charged €0.50/MB while in 2013 that would drop to €0.30/MB and then to €0.20/MB from July 2014. However, the recommendations are not definite. The legislature will now have to try to convince the European Commission – the EU’s executive arm – and 27 EU governments to approve the lower caps before June.

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