The cost of roaming calls within the European Union from June 30, 2007 is €0,49 per minute for outgoing calls and €0,24 per minute for incoming calls excluding VAT. According to Travel.ru, a project for per-second billing of international calls within the EU is currently being prepared.
The European Commission has noted that with per-minute billing, the price of calls is artificially raised by operators by rounding a few seconds of conversation up to a minute. Thus, experts believe, the average cost per minute of conversation in EU countries exceeds the established limits.
Only four countries have introduced per-second tariffs – France, Spain, Italy and Portugal, writes Podroze.onet.pl. Possibly as early as autumn, the remaining states will be required to switch to a similar billing system.