Surfing and phoning in other EU countries has now become normal. You send holiday photos via Whatsapp, use Google Maps when looking for a restaurant and find out about current events on your cell phone. Up until five years ago, this was associated with high costs because Cellular Provider charged extra in other networks.
The routing of calls or SMS through foreign networks and later surfing was a lucrative business for many years. The mobile phone companies justified the high fees with the expensive construction of the networks. Huge sums of money were made from roaming. For 2009, the EU Commission once named an amount of almost 5 billion euros.
From 2007, the costs have slowly shrunk. For mobile phone calls within the EU such as in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway initially capped the fees and then progressively reduced them. They were then completely abolished on June 15, 2017.
Which cost traps are still lurking
Since then, calls to Austria have been subject to the same prices as domestic calls, and internet use is the same as the domestic tariff. This will be maintained at least until 2032. In the spring, the member states decided to suspend the additional costs for a further ten years. But there are exceptions. roaming should not be confused with international telephony. If users from the home network, for example from Austria, call a foreign number or send an SMS to it, this is not considered roamingbut as international telephony.
Within the EU there are borders to avoid nasty surprises. Anyone calling from Austria with a cell phone or landline to other EU countries and not having a flat rate or a special tariff pays a maximum of 19 cents per minute, and a maximum of six cents per SMS is due.
who in non-EU countries calls or uses mobile data must reckon with high charges. Depending on the country and provider, they can be several euros per minute. After all, there is a protective shield when surfing internationally: A total of 59.50 euros is usually the end.
If, despite all caution, a hefty bill flutters into the house after the holiday, you may have fallen into another trap: the cell phone networks of cruise ships and airplanes. They are not covered by the Roaming Regulation. There you should also deactivate data roaming, not make calls and do without SMS – at least not before you know the tariffs.
Questions and answers about roaming:
Source: Nachrichten
