Things you dread upon the end of a holiday:
- Returning to work
- The work email inbox and its 999 unread, hateful messages
- The commute
- The arrival of your phone bill, pumped up with data roaming charges
Mercifully, you'll soon be scrapping that final horror, with the members of the European parliament voting through new laws to scrap mobile roaming charges from June 2017.
The outline of these new laws was tabled back in June, heralding an end to additional charges previously incurred by leaving your phone operator's service area. It's taken some EU politicians ten years of haggling with European telecoms providers to reform roaming charges.
There'll be a gradual stepping down of additional roaming costs added to your normal tariff between now and June 2017, according to a newly agreed schedule:
| Now | Outgoing calls: 14p per minute Incoming calls: 4p per minute Text messages: 4p per text Data: 15p per megabyte of data downloaded |
| April 2016 | All calls: 4p per minute Text messages: 2p per text Data: 4p per megabyte of data downloaded |
| June 2017 | All additional charges scrapped |
So, best keep the next couple of years of "Martinis by the pool" Instagram shots to wi-fi connections only.
As to where European mobile operators will pick up these lost revenues? Wait and see what your 2017 tariff looks like...
