Roam if you want to

The European Commission (EC) last week launched a website that names companies charging outrageous fees for traveling customers who use their mobile phones outside of their home country.

"At a time when we have seen in Europe so much progress in other telecommunications services, the cost of using your mobile phone abroad is hard to believe. This is why the Commission aims, with this new website, to give the consumer the knowledge to make an informed choice, to enhance competition in the industry and to encourage fairer and clearer pricing," Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media who is in charge of the EU's telecommunications policy, said in a statement.

According to the website, a four-minute call from Slovenia to Poland can cost as much as EUR 8.11 (zł.31.87). Maltese customers, for example, are charged EUR 12.70 (zł.49.92) for a four-minute call home from Latvia, while Finns only have to pay EUR 0.20 (zł.0.79) cents more for a call from Sweden, the EC said.

The website aims to even out those disparities by publishing how much it costs to make a call to your home country from another. The Commission says this should help consumers to find the best deal, while at the same time embarrassing those companies whose charges for this service - known as roaming - are inordinately high.

It also warned that several phone companies - most notably those in Luxembourg and Greece - publish little or no roaming tariff information online, although national phone associations across the EU had promised they would do so.

The website collected information published online in September this year, and officials say it will be updated every six months. It can be found at: http://europa.eu.int/information_society/roaming.