We’re coming up to the Easter break when many people are likely to travel abroad, however, if you are travelling anywhere in Europe, or further afield, be careful about using your SmartPhone or you may find yourself with a massive bill warns the consumer organisation ‘Which’.
We take our mobile phone everywhere, that’s the whole idea, and it would be perfectly natural to check our emails or access the internet whilst on the move. Not a good idea.
Most people don’t even think about their mobile phone bill when they do this as many data plans offer unlimited use for a reasonable fee but what many users don’t realise is that this doesn’t apply the moment they leave the country.
The rules are about to change on 1st July but for Europe only. After that date maximum bills for downloading data will be capped at 50 euros a month for the 27 European Union countries but this won’t apply to anywhere else in the world.
The consumer association would like to see the mobile phone companies extend the capping policy to all countries and not just to Europe.
“Mobile phone companies should voluntarily take these very sensible steps, and apply them on a worldwide basis” says Matt Bath of Which?
It does seem ridiculous in this communication age when many people are regularly travelling abroad with their mobiles that massive charges can be levied by mobile phone companies that far outweigh the actual costs involved.
However, the GSM Association which represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry doesn’t see it that way.
“Europe is a very unique market. We would not advocate copycat regulation for other territories” a spokesperson told the BBC. Why not I wonder?
Anyway, we regularly come across media reports of people who had unwittingly clocked up a small fortune just for using their mobile abroad, including one German guy travelling in France who got the shock of his life when his bill amounted to 46,000 euros. This could easily happen to you too.
So if you are travelling abroad you can either go into your settings and turn off the data roaming facility on your phone, or you can contact your mobile phone company in advance to agree on a limit before you travel, unless of course you don’t mind stumping up the cash for a huge bill.
