EU comission to limit roaming-SMS price to € 0,11-0,15 on Sept 23rd
 

Heise reported today, that Vivane Reding, the current European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, will finally regulate roaming-SMS prices for customers on September 23rd. The cap proposals of the national regulation authorities range between € 0,11 and € 0,15 before tax. However it is expected the limit to be set on the lower end of this range, as well as all 26 commissioners to agree.
After the European parlament' and the memberstates' approval, which is expected for December, the new rates could apply early next year.

So it seems like SMS while roaming will soon cost € 0,15 (with tax) within the EU. That's less than O2 charges me for national SMS on my postpaid contract (I currently would pay € 0,19 if there wasn't Betamax)!

Next step to limit extraterrestrial charges on data roaming. Now that data services are becoming more important all over the world with innovative products like data cards and iPhone-like terminals!

Yes, it's incredible but true. Great Viviane:D

I'm not all that impressed. I think it should be cheaper still, maybe 5 cents, and this is like giving networks permission not to bother

I really hope O2 UK won't increase their charges to that level. At the moment, contract inclusive texts are still used up while roaming, though 4 times faster. And to other countries cost me 12 pence recently, same while roaming as at home (from and to Germany). I'd rather keep those higher to still have the free ones, and I think many people would be happy to see that sort of offer

In holland some providers argued that the national rates will go up now. They have to earn their money somewhere. If that will be the case I'd rather have high interntaional rates and use my international cards and sms programms instead.

I'm wondering how carriers can justify the high charges for SMS? Their markup for this product is just breathtaking and the customers now have so many cheap alternatives, including e-mail, Betamax, IMs and the alternative SMS services (e.g. smsBug, FishText). One would think that competition would force them to lower their prices or face loss of the business.

Most consumers are unable or unwilling to use alternatives and the fact people pay those € 0.19 for 160 bytes justifies the price. Transfering one Megabyte by SMS would so cost € 1245,18 :-D
But at least here in Germany a lot of people are guided by the highly subsidized handset prices when closing a contract while disregarding the tariffs.

And I thought the Germans would be smarter than us Americans. :confused:

Well in Italy we nearly have no subsidized handsets, if not with some more expensive postpaid contracts, and people send really A LOT of SMS, but they still kept on increasing the rates to 15 cent for national, 30 cent international (except Wind) and 50 cent for roaming in EU (Wind).
Carriers just get TOO much money from SMS since people are too much used to send them and they will never stop... Here in Italy we don't have included texts in postpaid contracts, we just have some prepaid bundles of texts to the same operator's numbers. And they don't work while on roaming. So Reding's proposal is great for all italians traveling abroad.

Over here in Canada and even the US, I see an increasing number of people migrating from plain old SMS service to mobile IM services, either provided by the operator or third parties over packet radio (Fring, MSN Live Mobile etc).

I have yet to see a similar move in Europe where wireless data has been quite affordable for years now. I've seen people who would rather carry a second phone just to be able to SMS their circle of friends using products similar to those offered by Aldi in Germany(€0.03/each to other Aldi customers).

While I don't personally SMS that much (10-20 SMS/year is a lot), I jumped into the Fring bandwagon and love it.

Remembering my first days of mobile telephony back in 1995, when my Nokia 2148 (aka E-Plus PT-11) was the only GSM1800 phone to support SMS and when SMS was completley unknown and completely free, I became opposed to SMS very soon, when operators started charging it. Against the background of SMS being an incidently emerged by-product, that is realized through control channles at no extra cost for the operator, I reduced SMS-communication when voice-tariffs came down and I realized calling is mostly cheaper and more effective than exchanging a couple of texts.
IM is a very interesting thing, not only because of the costs, but also because the interoperatbility with computers. But only as long as operators don't block IM-services, like those wankers recently started to do over here. They obviously will do everything to prevent becoming sole so-called "bitpipe-providers", including developing their own IM-service by a GSMA-initiative in order to replace SMS and to bill us for every bit transmitted. VoIP has been blocked here, too. So as long as VPN is not blocked yet, we need to tunnel our communication to some VPN-gateway and that only few people will be able to do.

In Europe people LOVE sms much more than in the Americas. That's the big difference. SMS have entered our lives so deeply that now it's really hard to change habit. And of course that's much higher among young people, i.e. the future generations. Operators do know it and they get really A LOT of money from SMS which cost them nearly nothing.

me too, i remember when, in 1997, i've bought my first cell (an Ericcson): it was a great descover to send sms:p
I think it's correct EU decision, operators have a lot of gain about them and it's wrong

For the first 5 or 6 years of digital cellular in the US texting was not a big deal. I'd say most American customers had no idea how to send a text and some didn't even know how to read one if they received it. There are a number of reasons for this:
1. Because we pay for incoming calls Americans didn't give out their cellular numbers to just everyone. It was almost impolite to ask someone for his cellular number; sort of like asking for the combination to open their post office box.
2. Analog service hung around for a long time and you couldn't be sure if the other party could actually receive your text or not.
3. Similarly, the text systems between the various carriers were not well connected. GSM worked pretty well but you could not exchange texts with customers on CDMA and TDMA systems. Often customers on one TDMA system could not send a test to another TDMA carrier.
4. The competition was all over voice minutes. Folks could buy these huge buckets of voice minutes, like 3000 minutes for $50, but text was still 15c each. Why send a text for 15c when you can talk 9 minutes for the same price?

In my area this situation continued up until Hurricane Katrina (Aug 2005) damaged and overloaded most of the communications system. People who knew how to use text found that it would still work when voice would not. Since then many more people around here know how to use text, even if they don't do so regularly.

Young people tend to use text even when it's not the most cost-effective method. They are the reason that carriers now offer large text bucket bolt-ons for voice plans.

The discussed cuts of roaming tariffs is definitely becoming reality after the EU Parliament has approved the bill:
European Parliament Votes to Approve Cuts on Roaming Charges

Besides the cut in SMS-prices from July roaming calls within the EU will be billed by the second after the 30th second.

Meanwhile I wonder how the wholesale-cap of data prices will affect consumer tariffs.

I believe, and the many Europeans here can correct me if I'm wrong, the ultimate purpose of all this is to turn the eu into something akin to the USA with the various countries playing the role the various state do in the USA. It seems to be Redding's plan to eventually have no roaming charges throughout and within the eu.

If that comes to pass, it will certainly pretty much be the death of most of the international cards as Europeans would simply not need them. What would be the market? Americans? And basically if an American were travelling to Europe, all he or she would need is the cheapest PAYG card available. As the majority of my travelling is to Europe, I am beginning to question whether I really need to keep buying recharge vouchers to keep the sim cards I acquired earlier from France, Holland, Germany, Italy and Ireland. The Dutch one began to have a very limited shelf life, they have just deactivfated my German one, I'll be doing a three week tour of France and have been assiduosly acquired 10¢ top ups to keep that card alive, my Italy card is scheduled to expire in June. Perhaps with the current tariff situation I can make do with a free O2-UK card and as it stands now, use their european roaming tariffs (the key one is receiving at 18p/minute) calling back to the USA is expensive outside the UK of course but maybe a local ld card with a local number with resolve that issue at what is the rate for calls within Europe, 35p (especially since the UK£ has plunged to just about $1.45 US)....and of course if Redding has her way, reception will eventually be free and something like 15p/minute.

Now if only carriers such as T Mobile USA and AT&T would see the light and give even moderately fair rates on international roaming.

Depending on how much you are likely to call in a month, it can be a lot cheaper than that with a temporary subscription to o2 MyEurope Extra. This can be switched on and off for a month at a time on the prepaid o2 cards, and costs 10 pounds a month. For that it offers free incoming and slightly cheaper outgoing at 25p/min though you can also setup a callback. The subscription cost justifies itself as opposed to the roaming tarriff if you are going to be receiving more than 55 mins of calls in a month.

I have mentioned it before here, but I really can't sing it's praises enough, as it has saved me probably 1000's of euros in the last few years, and a lot of the headache that goes with the Internatioal roaming cards (which have come to light again recently with the 'possible' demise of UM). The nicest thing is that I keep the same ordinary UK mobile number that I have had for the last 10 years and never have to give out an IOM/Jersey,Lichtenstein,belgian etc. or setup a divert etc. Also unlike with other +447 numbering ranges (IOM, Jersey etc.) friends from the UK on any network never get nasty bill surprises when they call me. This used to be an issue in the past.

After more than a few dabbles with international roaming cards, I basically gave up on pretty much all of them about two and half years ago, after o2 UK kindly gave me a free subscription (on my postpay account) to MyEurope Extra. I still have a few other international cards for travel outside Europe (e.g. eKit, Maxroam), but they see limited use these days for the countries I end up visiting.

BBC on new EU mobile phone costs

Cost of texting abroad comes down
Mobile phone
Roaming text charges have not been capped in the EU before

The cost of sending text messages from your mobile phone when you are overseas in the European Union has come down.

The maximum charge for sending a text is now 11 euro cents ($0.15; 9.4p) plus sales tax.

It is the first time that text charges have been capped. The previous EU average was 28 cents.

The price of making a call is capped at 43 cents a minute, down from 46 cents, while the price of receiving a call is capped at 19 cents, down from 22 cents.

"The roaming-rip off is now coming to an end," said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding.

The cost of transferring a megabyte of data is capped at one euro.

Also, mobile operators have been forced to charge for calls by the second after the first half minute, instead of rounding up to the nearest minute.

Here's the EU page on roaming costs.

Roaming: The roaming regulation | Europa - Information Society

So how quickly will prepaid SIMs have these in effect?

Immideately since yesterday. All cards have to stick to the rules, no matter if contract or prepaid.

Chris

@Lucy
Yesterday's changes were proposed by the EU-commission back in September 2008 and passed the last instance in the legislative procedure, the EU parliament, in April 2009. So that was expected for months now.
By the way the prices mentioned in the article, you posted, are without VAT and the cap of data tariffs does not apply for consumer prices, but for wholesale price (what operators charge each other for roaming customers using data).

How do these changes affect international SIM providers?

Are the MNVO's registered and operating in EU countries required to offer the Euro-tariff?

How about operators based in an EU-country but hosting MNVO's registered and operating outside of the EU?

What about the other way around (I think eKit & Mobal are examples)?