Today marks the end of a 10-year journey to make Europe a single place, at least as far as using your mobile phone is concerned.
From today, roaming charges for using your phone in another European country have been abolished, meaning that consumers will now pay the same price they do at home.
The changes to roaming charges were set by the European Commission in 2007 when it introduced the Eurotariff, a maximum price cap for making and receiving calls in other EU countries. The price cap has been gradually reduced while the Commission has also introduced restrictions on the price charged for data services in other Member States.
The falling scale of charges over the past decade are shown in the graphic below.
Source: European Commission
The abolition of charges will be welcomed by travel buyers or those who count travel among other categories they manage, who are often at the receiving end of such charges in the form of expense claims.
However, the idea that costs may drop sharply as a result may not be so certain. Our chart this week, from a regular study carried out by telecoms competitiveness research firm tefficient, shows how mobile data usage has shot up in recent years in countries across Europe — the main culprit being data-hungry smartphone apps.
The top five countries for data usage worldwide are Finland, South Korea, Sweden, Austria and Denmark, according to the research. Finnish mobile users consumed an average of seven gigabytes (GB) every month in the first half of 2016, the research reveals.
The reason data usage is so high in these countries is that unlimited data plans are popular, with higher prices being charged for the speed of connection rather than the amount of data used.
The countries with the lowest mobile data usage are Greece, Belgium, Czech Republic, Romania, the Netherlands, Portugal and Germany. The higher cost of data in countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands is partly to blame for this.
While things may be getting cheaper in one sense, the fact that smartphones are getting more data hungry and rates are capped at domestic prices rather than some fixed rate across Europe means that mobile bills may not be getting smaller for some.