Heard the one about the German tourist who downloaded a TV program in France and got whacked with a €46,000 mobile Internet bill? How about the UK student who racked up almost £8,000 in roaming data charges in two months?

Hopefully these stories will surface less often thanks to the latest move by the European Union. As of Monday, EU-governed mobile companies must offer their wandering customers a monthly cut-off limit for roaming broadband access. Once their bill goes past that specified sum, they'll be informed that their mobile connection to the Internet has been blocked.

The regulation was passed by the governing body last June. EU country mobile roamers can choose their data gobbling price ceiling themselves until July 1, when it will automatically default at €50 unless they pick some other amount. They'll get a warning from their service when they reach 80 percent of whatever maximum they've chosen.

The decision was presented by EU "Digital Agenda" Commissioner Neelie Kroes as a means to encourage widespread 'Net use among travelers. "Protection against data roaming bill shocks is a useful step towards building customers' confidence to use mobile networks to surf the Internet when traveling around Europe," she said.

Works perfectly

But EU pols have doubtless been getting plenty of outraged e-mails from consumers themselves about this trend. The case of University of Nottingham student William Harrison is the roaming bill shock horror story du jour. The industrious lad wanted Internet access while studying in Paris and so attached a USB dongle to his laptop. The nice lady at the mobile store said this would "work perfectly in France."

So Harrison dongled away while studying in Gay Paree. He mostly used Skype; not a lot of video, he says. Nonetheless, the scholar was presented with a bill for £6,101.56, followed by another which brought the total to £7,648.77. Other nasty surprises included a tab for £4,900 cheerfully presented to an overseas BBC iPlayer user trying to keep up with her shows. The grand prize goes a traveling video downloader who picked up a £31,500 receipt for a single program.

The EU doesn't like this business where a Skype user gets treated as Harrison did. "There should be no obstacles to the emergence of applications or technologies which can be a substitute for, or alternative to, roaming services," the Union noted in its bill shock decision "such as WiFi, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Instant Messaging services."

National limits

But the roaming problem, says the EU, stems from the fact that travelers often find themselves at the mercy of "non-preferred" data networks when their signals aren't strong enough to link to more affordable ("preferred") ones. Non-preferred services, knowing that donglers and tetherers have no choice at the moment but to access them, sometimes charge at prices 30 times higher than preferred networks.

"In view of the limitations on the ability of national regulatory authorities to deal with these problems effectively at national level, a wholesale price limit on data roaming services should apply," the Union ruled.

And so, along with the decision leading to Monday's new anti-bill shock rules, came new roaming price rules too. These include limiting the ding on an overseas text message to €0.11; a maximum wholesale cap of €1 per megabyte downloaded over the Web, to drop further each year; and a maximum tab of €0.43 for phone calling and €0.19 for receiving a call. Operators had to obey the texting and calling rules by July 1 of last year, and the Web surfing cap by this month.

Kroes has been an outspoken critic of what she calls the "fragmentation" of the EU region that makes this data roaming problem possible. "I want to be clear here," she told wireless carriers at an industry conference held in Barcelona, Spain in February. "If you want to take advantage of the current fragmentation of the single market, I will stand in your way. But if you are ready to operate across the borders in a really integrated European market, I will be your best ally."