In a move that will certainly be appreciated by Europeans and visitors to the continent who use a local telco, the European Parliament today passed a law which eliminates mobile roaming fees. The implementation won’t be immediate though, mobile roaming fees will gradually be eliminated by the year 2017. That’s barely two years from now.
This isn’t a completely unexpected move by the European Parliament, for quite some time now the proposal to do away with roaming fees across the entire continent has enjoyed widespread support in the legislative body. There was no question of this law not passing and as today’s action proves that point.
The law makes it illegal for mobile carriers to charge roaming fees for calls, text messages and data from customers in Europe, June 15th, 2017 is the date when this law officially comes into force. Users will instead pay the same rate for calls, texts and data that they pay back home.
Before that happens though roaming charges will be capped at €0.05 per minute for outgoing calls, €0.02 for texts, and €0.05 for each megabyte of data from April 30th, 2016. A cap for incoming calls will be confirmed at a later date.
Many Europeans have been waiting for this law to pass and now they can rest assured that within two years they will no longer be required to pay any roaming fees no matter where they travel to across the continent.
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