Mobile roaming fees should be history by the summer, with the European Union having agreed to a steep drop in maximum wholesale roaming prices.

The EU clinched a preliminary deal early today to cap wholesale charges telecom operators pay each other when their customers use their mobile phones abroad, paving the way for the abolition of roaming fees in June.

Caps on wholesale roaming charges were the last piece of the puzzle needed for the abolition of retail roaming charges as of June 15, crowning a decade of efforts by Brussels to allow citizens to use their phones abroad without paying extra.

Wholesale charges for data - which were the most controversial given the exponential use of mobile internet - will be capped at €7.7 euros per gigabyte from June, going down to €2.5 euros per gigabyte in 2022.

Caps for making calls will decrease from 5c per minute to 3.2c per minute, while those for sending text messages will be halved to 1c from 2c as of June.

"Goodbye roaming," tweeted Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, the EU lawmaker who steered the law on behalf of the European parliament.

The S& D Group tweeted "We did it! No more roaming charges."

The European Commission - the EU executive - will review the wholesale caps every two years and propose new ones if necessary.

Today's deal still needs to be confirmed by the full European Parliament and member states.

The battle against roaming charges took on an added significance after Britain voted to quit the bloc last year in a surge of anti-EU sentiment and Brussels has sought to show it works for ordinary citizens.

"Today we deliver on our promise," said Andrus Ansip, European Commission vice president.

But after the agreement to abolish retail roaming charges in June this year, policymakers grappled with the challenge of who would foot the bill as telecom operators still need to pay each other to keep their customers connected abroad.

The quandary was compounded by wide differences in domestic prices and consumption patterns across the bloc, making a wholesale cap that suited all national markets extremely hard to find.

Countries in northern and eastern Europe where consumers gobble up mobile data at low prices favoured lower wholesale caps to avoid companies raising prices in their home markets, effectively making poorer customers subsidise frequent travellers.

However countries in the tourist-magnet south worried that their operators could be forced to hike domestic prices to recover the costs of accommodating the extra tourist traffic.

Digital Minister Emmanuel Mallia said: "Reaching a quick agreement on wholesale roaming prices was a top priority for the Maltese presidency. The decision is the final step in a process that started 10 years ago. From next summer, wherever they are travelling in Europe, our citizens will be able to make calls, send texts, surf and stay connected. Roam like at home is now a reality."

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.