The European Commission has announced that mobile roaming charges within the EU will be massively reduced from Saturday.

The interim cap will make roaming 75% cheaper before a full ban on those charges comes into effect on June 15th next year.

From then on, mobile users will pay the same price to make calls, send texts and use data as they would at home, no matter where they are in the EU.

During the interim, mobile operators can only charge up to 5 cent per minute for calls, 2 cent per SMS and 5 cent per MB of data used, excluding VAT.

The full ban is being brought about to end the "bill shock" that apparently affects as many as nine million mobile users in the UK each year (according to uSwitch research), where people download large files abroad and are hit with incredibly expensive charges.

European Commission vice president Andrus Ansip said the move was "not only about money, this is about bringing down barriers in the Digital Single Market".

Commissioner Gunther H Oettinger, the man in charge of the Digital Economy and Society, said:

"roaming charges will be soon old memories".