LONDON, May 1 (UPI) -- European consumers' costs to pay for cellphone calls outside their country have been slashed.
The roaming charges were reduced Saturday and will disappear entirely in June 2017 after intervention by the European Union.
The commission had been battling with the cellphone providers to end the high costs for making cross-border calls and data in another country. In October, the EU announced the changes to make calls in the 28 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
An EU cap will slash the cost by 70 perent from 13 British pennies 4 a minute for calls. Sending a text message will be halved from 4 pennies to 2 and using the Internet will be 71 percent cheaper, dropping from 14 pennies to 4 per MB of data.
Although these changes are an EU regulation, they likely would be retained if the United Kingdom leaves the EU. "These charges are being abolished across Europe and abroad. There is no evidence to suggest that they will go up if we vote to leave," said Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave.
Micheal Kilcoyne of the Consumers Association of Ireland says phone companies should reduce charges even more.
"Of course it was only really implemented as a result of pressure from the EU Commission," he told newstalk.com. "Yes, it's to be welcomed but these mobile companies and providers of mobile data have made a fortune on consumers, and in my view should reduce their prices even further."
