There are so many mobile phone deal nowadays that sometimes you wonder if it is worth having the traditional land line phone. In fact with so much free minutes and even deals that offer 12 months rental on a 12 months contract, you wonder how any mobile phone service provider can make the profits they do. Well one way they make money id through roaming charges, especially to European travellers, travelling on business or pleasure. Roaming charges is where it costs you to receive calls as well as make them. It can even cost you to receive them on your mobile phone answering machine, with you phone switched off. These roaming charges can be up to 1 a minute, with the first minute being charged for even if only 10 seconds are used. Up to now a solution for this has been to buy a global sim card which is roaming charge free, although some outgoing calls can cost more depending on the network. If you reside often within a free wifi area, you can buy phones that log into Skype, where you can make internet to internet calls free to anywhere in the world. But unfortunately, even with the increased amount of wifi areas, this would still be hit and miss to receive that important call. It does look however that in Europe things are about to change. The European government have ruled that charges should be looked at and capped so that users get a fairer deal. This may come into effect by August, where many European travellers will just miss the benefit, if they have their normal school holidays in late July or early August. However, those who travel regularly to the continent must surely be happy with this latest news. It has also been quoted that contracts that have free minutes included, can use these minutes for foreign calls. But this may affect other mobile phone deals as it is possible that these roaming charges were paying for the free benefits from other users. It certainly will hit into the huge profits that the service providers are still making in this competitive business. Many who regularly visit one particular country may own a separate sim card for that country, where they would not suffer from roaming charges, but the call would be more expensive to the caller. But with this new ruling it may be possible not to need a second sim and benefit from the convenience of one mobile phone number. This internet is likely to take over from the satellite technology or global sim card as in theory calls can be made to a local internet base, transmitted over the internet to another internet base in another country and then another local call to the mobile phone in this second country. As in most businesses the internet is likely to change how we do things and reduce costs. This may still have a way to go but in the meantime, it is great news the European government is on the side of the average person on the street rather than the global giants.
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