[Hands0n]

There is growing pressure on the mobile operators to introduce transparency in their international roaming charges that are buried away deep inside their websites. Sure, they can be found with a little bit of persistence, but they are not "in yer face" - which they should be, given how much you can get hit for when travelling. One chap recently was billed £800 for downloading 100MBytes of data while travelling to France and Italy!

The website linked to by the following url will give you an idea of what you are likely to be charged while roaming. Select your home country and sample rates for all that nation's mobile operators will be displayed.

See here --> http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/roaming/tariffs/index_en.htm



What are people paying for international roaming? These pages give you some typical roaming charges faced by subscribers in each EU country, giving you an idea of what you can reasonably expect to pay.

Tariffs provided in these pages are based on a four-minute voice conversation on a typical weekday morning or afternoon including VAT


Edit: See for yourself how obscure the International Roaming charges are for each UK operator by selecting links from this url --> http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/roaming/consumer/operators/gb/index_en.htm

Some are more difficult to locate the information you require than others. Vodafone are quite clear and helpful by some contrast. Well done Vodafone.

[Hands0n]

The FAQ Page has some very interesting information on the costs and what the EU are doing to make these more reasonable (here --> http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/roaming/faq/index_en.htm )

Some Q&A quotes from the page follow


What is being done about the level of these charges?

The European Commission, in co-operation with the European Regulators Group, is currently pursuing a number of initiatives in order to lower roaming charges.

Firstly, the Commission is actively using its own investigative and enforcement powers to combat anti-competitive behaviour by specific network operators (see ‘The Bigger Picture’).

Secondly, unfair wholesale charges incurred among operator which have an impact on retail prices can also be addressed under the European regulatory framework for electronic communications (see ‘The Bigger Picture’). Under that framework, national regulatory authorities are now analysing their national markets on uncompetitive behaviour, and will notify the Commission of their planned decisions in due course.

What has been the impact of the Commission initiatives on international mobile roaming charges?

There are some signs that the market is beginning to become more competitive. A few large European operators have recently introduced simplified tariff packages which appear to offer the consumer a better deal.

However, it is still too early to judge the effects of these initiatives on roaming tariffs. The Commission believes that substantially more progress from all mobile operators in Europe is both necessary and possible. This is why the Commission has started its initiative on retail price transparency.