The European Parliament on Thursday formally approved a plan that will put a cap on how much travelers can rack up in mobile roaming charges.

The European Parliament on Thursday formally approved a plan that will put a cap on how much travelers can rack up in mobile roaming charges.

Members passed the deal by a vote of 578 to 10, the Parliament said in a statement.

The rules are set to go into effect on July 1, capping the price of data at 70 Euro cents per megabyte. That will fall to 45 cents in 2013 and 20 cents by July 1, 2014. At this point, there are no caps on mobile data service in Europe.

One-minute voice calls, meanwhile, will cost no more than 29 cents starting on July 1 and 19 cents by July 2014, which is down from the current max of 35 cents. Text messages will drop from 11 cents to 9 cents on July 1 and to 6 cents by 2014.

The new rules are intended to prevent "bill shock," or the exorbitant cell-phone fees consumers can sometimes incur while traveling. Under the approved plan, customers will receive an alert when they approach 50 Euros worth of overage charges.

The plan was by the European Commission and in March. Parliament, however, had to give its final seal of approval before it could go into effect.

In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission last year that will require wireless carriers to offer "reasonable" data roaming rates. About a month later, , arguing that the FCC did not have the authority to establish such restrictions.

In October, meanwhile, the FCC and wireless trade group CTIA announced that wireless providers have agreed to if they are about to incur overage charges on voice, data, text messages, and international roaming.