Oliver Cromwell was hanged and decapitated two years after he had died
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EU locks down roaming charges
EUROPEAN MINISTERS have stepped up their battle against mobile network providers that seek to gouge their customers' wallets every time they leave the country.
Thanks to roaming rules coming out of the EU, all travelling data users will have a roaming charge set limit of €50 excluding VAT, and will be sent a message as soon as they hit 80 per cent of their allocation, something that might discourage people from watching Top Gear on the Iplayer in favour of saving their data allowance for important things like looking up the local police station phone number, local accident and emergency services facilities, and booking the next available flight home.
Commission vice president for the digital agenda Neelie Kroes said, "There will be no more bill shocks for tourists or business travellers surfing the internet with smart phones or laptops while in another EU country. The EU is also cutting the cost of roaming calls for travellers. I am determined to make the EU's telecoms markets more competitive."
The new rules come in on 1 July and also set a maximum roaming call price of 39 cents per minute, again excluding VAT, and cut wholesale prices for roaming from €1 to 80 cents per MB. Receiving calls will also be less painful, as the EU has cut charges from 19 cents per minute, excluding VAT, to 15 cents.
European ministers want to stop the sort of bills that some of their citizens have recently received. For example, it quoted the case of a German traveller who got a bill for €46,000 after watching a television show on holiday in France, and a UK student who incurred a bill of almost €9,000 after roaming for a month.
Other changes designed to make bills clearer and lower for users include free alerts when a new voice mail is received and a cap on SMS message costs, which will remain at 11 cents per message. µ
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"something that might discourage people from watching Top Gear on the Iplayer"
Except that iplayer doesn't work from a non-UK IP does it :-)
I'm sure this is more aimed at iphone tourists who haven't grasped that their sat nav app relies on a data connection to pull in the maps...
Unlike the preload option available to Nokia owners... Now who's got the best gadget eh?
No need to look up emergency services, I quote wikipedia:
112 (one-one-two) is the emergency telephone number in:
* the European Union member states,
* Croatia (EU Candidate Country), Colombia,
* worldwide on GSM mobile networks and their more modern equivalents.
[end quote]
And a number of other countries also use 112.
Can anyone understand if this is limited to subscribers of EU-based cell phone companies roaming within other EU networks... or this will benefit foreigners with non-EU-based accounts roaming on the EU networks (i.e. a US traveler with an US T-mobile account)
Can anyone understand if this is limited to subscribers of EU-based cell phone companies roaming within other EU networks... or this will benefit foreigners with non-EU-based accounts roaming on the EU networks (i.e. a US traveler with an US T-mobile account)