Eurocrats have voted to axe hugely expensive mobile phone roaming charges across the European Union.
Roaming fees are extra charges paid by expats and travellers using their mobile phones outside of their home country.
Other countries are also looking at similar bans – for instance, for mobile phone users moving between the US and Canada or Australia and New Zealand.
“This is a chance to lower mobile phone charges in Europe and will encourage a digital economy,” European Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso said.
The commission wants to see roaming fees scrapped across the EU by July 2014.
£37,000 roaming bill
The commission wants mobile providers to give consumers “roam like at home” packages the EU or allow them to sign up for service providers without having to change a SIM card.
The next step is for the proposal to go to the European Parliament for approval.
Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) spokesman Asher Moses praised the proposals for Europe and wants a similar agreement between Australia and New Zealand.
“Australia is not geographically located to make similar bilateral agreements easy, but ACCAN would like to see this approach explored further to help reduce the global roaming rip-off,” he said.
Scrapping roaming charges will stop cases like a French woman who has to pay a £37,650 mobile phone bill after loaning her company phone to friends.
She has appealed against the bill, but lost her case after the provider showed nine warning emails about costs were sent to her.
How to beat roaming charges
The unlimited SIM card was passed to a friend who then put it in their son’s mobile.
The son then went on a trip to Morocco and accessed calls and the internet from the phone, racking up more than £30,000 of charges.
One of the problems consumers have with roaming charges is that mobile phones still connect and click up costs when the user is unaware.
This was illustrated in another case, involving Celina Aarons, of Florida, had a mobile roaming bill for £124,000 after her brother took the phone on a trip to Canada and failed to turn off data access.
Most smartphones switch around 20 Mb of data every day regardless of the use of the device.
The provider charged £6.25 per Mb of data a day, which can quickly add up to £125 in charges every day without the owner realising.
Regular travellers and expats can get round the problem by buying an unregistered phone and installing a local provider’s SIM card as they move between countries.