After a European Parliament committee voted for the European Commission’s proposed roaming data and SMS price caps earlier this month, member states have now finally agreed to implement the cuts. New cross-border fees will break down as follows…

—Data roaming, wholesale price: Falling from current €2.05 average to €1 per megabyte (£0.91) from July 1 this year (then to €0.80 from July 1, 2010, and to just €0.50 from July 1, 2011).
—SMS roaming, retail price: Falling from current €0.49 average per message to €0.11 (£0.10) from July 1 this year.

This means the cost of consuming rich mobile content (or web content on a laptop via mobile broadband) will fall by a big 75 percent over the next two years - at least, at the wholesale level. What remains to be seen - how far will operators pass the cuts on to consumers, and will carriers wrap the new prices in to customers’ domestic unlimited data bundles? Carriers are going to have to make up these enforced price cuts somehow - perhaps in the wider adoption that the lower rates will bring?

Despite the price cuts, to ensure customers still don’t face bill shocks, customers will get to operate under a minimum price ceiling of €50 (£46) - operators must warn customers when they have reached 80 percent of their desired data roam rate and will block roaming services if users don’t respond. The new measures must now be endorsed by the parliament’s industry committee and the Council Of Ministers before going to a parliamentary plenary in April. Release.

• European Lawmakers Vote To Cap Roamed SMS Charges, Data Downloads; Differences Remain
• EU Ministers Agree Mobile Data Price Cap, Reject Wider Reforms