I been roaming with my iPhone in France and Italy. O2 Ireland’s data roaming charges are preposterous, but I knew that. The EU has already regulated the cost of voice charges (see Regulation (EC) No 717/2007, Wikipedia entry here). Apparently they are currently considering something similar for data and SMS charges.

Last month, I was still a little blown away by the total roaming charge, did a few calculations, and discovered that I was being significantly overcharged.

This month, I noticed exactly the same thing, with exactly the same proportional overcharge. Last month they just credited me back the money. This month, they’ve lodged it as a technical issue, and told me that I’ll be credited back during the next few days, when the issue is dealt with by the tech team.

Cost Breakdown

The data roaming charges for O2 Ireland are €4.95 inc. VAT per megabyte (309 times more expensive than their local data rate of 1.6c/MB, even though data roaming represents no additional infrastructural cost to them).

Anyway, that’s €4.09 ex. VAT. On my last two bills they charged €8.50 ex VAT per MB. That’s €10.26 inc. VAT per MB, more than twice their advertised rate.

For me, that represented an overcharge of €103 last month, and €134 this month.

I wonder if this is just me, or are they doing it to lots of people? I guess you’d need something like an iPhone to rack up enough data to really care.

September Update

My friend, who is also being overcharged in exactly the same way, just pointed out to me that €10.26 is very close to €10.24, which is what a roaming megabyte would cost you if you didn’t have a data plan (at 1 cent per kilobyte). So, it looks to me like I’m about to be overcharged again for the 3rd month in a row - I’ll be calling O2 again tomorrow.

At least I know its not just me that’s being overcharged now anyway.