Roam if you want to
T-Mobile UK has announced that its data roaming charges will fall by as much as 80 percent within the EU. This comes as a 1st July deadline set by the European commissioner for information society and media – set last February – for operators to curtail data roaming charges looms.
“We have seen a growing demand to access the internet and make calls while traveling outside the UK,” said T-Mobile UK chief executive Jim Hyde.
“With one in four new contract customers signing on for mobile broadband and our user numbers expected to quadruple in 2008, we have taken timely action to remove the single biggest constraint for the growing number of people who rely on mobile internet access while travelling in Europe for business or pleasure.”
With mobile broadband contracts increasingly bundled in with laptop deals, telco services are becoming an ever more important source of revenue for the IT channel.
From 1 July, roaming data charges over T-Mobile will drop from £7.50 to £1.50. However, it’s waiting until 30th August to drop the cost of sending a text from EU countries to 25p from 40p, with texts received for free.
Apparently data traffic now exceeds voice on T-Mobile’s UK network. The company insists that it’s the economies of scale brought about by the proliferation in demand for wireless data services that have enabled it to pass on these savings to customers and makes no mention of the European Commission’s demands in its press release.
