EUFrom July, browsing mobile internet and downloading e-mails will be a lot cheaper. The European Parlament has accepted the vote on capping mobile data charges. ”Todays vote in the EU Parlament is very good for the end customer,” says EU Telecommunication Commisioner Viviane Reding, who drafted the regulation, which got accepted 21-8. 21 for the proposal. Ms Viviane Reding is a well known person to the mobile regulations industry. It was she who drew war against mobile operator prices, and it was also she, who has regulated them dramatically back in June 2007, capping their call prices.

0,5 EUR per MB - Price down even 40 times

According to Financial Times, the price should be limited to 50 c per MB from July this year. Todays mobile operator prices in Europe are in average around € 4, but can also bulk up to €20 per MB in the worst places not using a data tarif.

SMS prices down too

More good news - SMS prices will also be regulated, while the usual prices being 30 - 40c, new SMS price is 11c per message, allowing people to message back home much cheaper, and probably rising the revenue of these services.

Mobile operators announced, that these regulations and caping may affect their profitability and directly impact investment into new services, and might even lead to price growth in other areas, so probably even more regulations in other areas.

This is great news for mobile advertising companies, mobile services companies, and everybody else in the industry, because usage of their services will go up, and revenues too. At current stage, so many people are afraid using foreign data to get a bill-shock at the end of the month. Its still a long way to go, but this one step had to be done. I think next step is capping daily data charges, capping daily roaming data charges, and then capping monthly data charges + roaming monthly data charges, so that it is completely transparent for the customers.

And what do you think about this data capping, and EU regulations in general?

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