British holidaymakers rejoice, the EU has just announced the latest prices for data roaming in Europe. From July 1 onwards, data will cost no more than 45 cents per MB, or 39p in British money.
This is a significant climbdown from the days where Brits abroad would rack up huge charges for doing something as simple as checking emails or simply uploading an album of pictures to Facebook.
Next year maximum prices for data will fall even further to 20 cents per MB, currently equivalent to 17p per MB.
Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes said: “The EU has to be relevant to people’s lives. The latest price cuts put more money in your pocket for summer, and are a critical step towards getting rid of these premiums once and for all. This is good for both consumers and companies, because it takes fear out of the market and it grows the market.”
The costs of making calls and texts are set to fall as well. From July 1 2013 voice calls will cost no more than 24 cents per minute (20p) to make and no more than 7 cents per minute (5p) to receive. Texts will cost 8 cents (6p) to send.
Note that travel offers made by UK networks will in some cases see you paying less than these rates. Networks are still free to offer bundle deals whereby you pay X amount up front in exchange for a limited or unlimited bundle of minutes, texts and data to use abroad for a set period of time.
EU to Sterling conversations supplied by XE.com and were correct at the time of writing.
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