Spanish carrier Telefonica, which owns the O2 group of companies, proposed to cut the cost of mobile data services when roaming by as much as 40 per cent on Monday.

Consumers in Spain, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic will benefit from a range of new data roaming tariffs aimed at those travelling within Europe ahead of the summer holiday season in July.

Telefonica said the cuts will include both significant reductions in the per-MB price and the introduction of time-based charging principles, such as daily rates.

The new roaming tariffs for UK customers will see the cost of data on a postpaid tariff drop from £7.05 per MB to £3 per MB, while prepay users will see data rates drop from £15 per MB to £3.

Business customers and heavier users can also take advantage of a new data bundle, which gives travellers 50MB of data to use on any roaming partner network worldwide for a flat monthly fee of Eur50.

The price of text messaging will also drop, with prepay users seeing a decrease from £0.49 to £0.25 per SMS, which is what postpay users currently pay, although bundled and inclusive SMS allowances will now be usable when roaming.

Matthew Key, chairman and CEO of Telefonica O2 Europe, said: “Today’s announcement honours the promise we made to customers at that time that, having reduced the cost of calling whilst abroad, we would bring down the last barrier in roaming charges – data. Importantly, it also addresses the issue of transparency where, for too long, customers have been confused by a plethora of tariffs and fees. The published rate will apply across the board – regardless of the mobile network used.”