European cell phone users have just won a bit of a victory in the form of reduced cell phone bills thanks to some major changes agreed upon by European Union regulators. The new changes will significantly cut the cost of both voice calls and text messages made while traveling. There are also plans in the works to make it easier to switch between cell phone providers. These changes are a long time in coming; the mobile phone companies have been fighting them for about two years but they’ve finally lost their battle.

Regulation of voice calls and text message costs already exists but the new legislation significantly tightens that regulation. Those of you who have gone on vacation only to come home to exorbitant cell phone bills because you used your data while roaming will no longer find that to be a problem due to the new caps that are created on charges resulting from this legislation.

From July 2008 we can expect to pay a maximum of 10 pence for an SMS sent while roaming and 92 pence for a single megabyte of downloaded data.  The data cost will then drop to 50 cents (currently about 45 pence) by 2011. An agreement was also agreed to reduce roaming call costs by the same year to 0.35 cents per minute outgoing and 0.11 cents incoming.  This equates to 32 pence and 10 pence at current exchange rates.

And the second part of the new legislation is no small deal either although it’s still in the works. Right now it can take a really long time to switch between cell phone providers. The companies do their best to tie you up in hassles about switching so that they can keep you as a customer. There is a push amongst the EU regulators to also make it a requirement that switching companies should take less than one day. Coming off of the success of cutting phone costs, they just may be able to make this happen as well.