France, Spain, Lithuania and Portugal are currently the only EU member states where mobile phone operators are obliged to charge for calls by the second, but the rules apply only to calls made within those countries.
As from 30 August, when the second phase of the EU's roaming regulation is implemented, the maximum price for roaming calls will drop from €0.49 to €0.46 per minute for making a call and from €0.24 to €0.22 for receiving a call. The third and final phase of the regulation will, from 30 August 2009, see the caps further reduced to €0.43 for making calls and to €0.19 for receiving calls.
By early October Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for the information society, is due to publish plans to extend the regulation for a further three years from 2010. She is also expected to announce plans to cap the cost of sending text messages from other EU countries which could see the present average cost of €0.29 being capped at between €0.11 and €0.15.
Plans to cap the price of downloading data to a mobile device are also being considered by Reding. A report published earlier this month by the European Regulators Group revealed that in the first quarter of 2008 consumers paid an average of €2.05 per megabyte for roaming with companies from their own operator's group and €5.20 per megabyte for roaming with non-group companies. Some consumers in Italy and Slovakia are being charged over €12 per megabyte, the report found.
