Telefonica has responded to the European Parliament's approval of new roaming legislation by launching a pan-EU data roaming tariff that it says is many times cheaper than the EU's mandated rate.
The operator is launching a tariff that gives 25MB usage anywhere across the 27 European Union member states for €2 a day, or £1.99 per day for UK customers. Telefónica is keen to point out that its tariff is well below the price caps announced by the European Union yesterday – which ruled that as of 1 July, one data megabyte should cost no more than 70 cents, or €17.50 for 25MB.
The Pan-European tariff launched in Germany in May and will be available "this summer" to O2 and Movistar customers in Spain, United Kingdom, Ireland, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Telefonica claims that the average smartphone user uses around 6MB per day. Its new tariff is roughly in line with Vodafone's Data Traveller rate, which offers a daily rate of £2 to UK customers, for 25MB, visting its Europe zone.
In time, the EC Digital Agenda seeks to level any premium between home tariffs and roaming, meaning that operators have little choice but to reduce their roaming tariffs. Operators are also facing a restructuring of the roaming market, intended to introduce competition, that will see users being offered separate roaming contracts by other operators and MVNOs.