The European Union’s new charges for mobile ‘roaming’ when abroad have been agreed by the European parliament and will become law from 1st July 2012. Overall, consumers are expected to save 75% across roaming calls, text messages and data compared with 2007 prices.

As well as reduced costs for voice calls and SMS messages, new price caps for mobile data will be introduced.

This week’s podcast from The Fonecast covers all the top stories from the past seven days. We’re talking about RIM’s plans for its BlackBerry business, the EC’s plans for ‘roaming’ tariffs, T-Mobile’s price-rise plans and much more.

You can listen to the programme on our website audio player, via iTunes, by using our RSS feed or by downloading the MP3.

Iain Graham and James Rosewell look back at the top mobile industry stories from the past seven days - including RIM's BlackBerry plans and the EC's new roaming regulations.

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s always a relief when April Fool’s Day doesn’t fall on a work day, isn’t it?  Still, that didn’t stop the jokes. Even though the mobile industry traditionally tends to head to the pub for a roast dinner and a pint on Sunday, there was many a prank in the morning of April 1st.

Our friends at 51Degrees.mobi revealed left-handed device detection, Google prepared to run mobile ads on phones with dials, Phones 4U introduced Gnomes 4U femtocells, Nokia made a Windows Phone device out of ice… and so on.

A new way of dealing with calls when ‘roaming’ abroad in Europe could be introduced in a couple of years - and new charges could arrive in July 2012. That’s the message from the European Commission, which has just announced a preliminary deal on new EU Roaming rules.

The European Parliament is expected to approve this agreement in May 2012, with the Council of the European Union expected to give its approval in June. The new rules could then become law on 1st July 2012.