Study: mobile voice charges to fall, but our bills will climb

Thanks to EU heat and old fashioned competition, mobile voice charges are expected to keep falling over the next three years, leading to lower average revenue per customer from voice calls for mobile operators, a new study from tech consultants at Analysys predicts. But it's not all good news for price-conscious mobile users. New services such as mobile internet will be too tempting for consumers to pass up, raising overall average bills for Western Europeans by 10.2 per cent between now and 2012, Analysys says.

Another staggering factor is just how mobile-mad we are. The tech consultancy predicts there will be 490 million mobile subscriptions in Western Europe by 2012. That's a mobile penetration rate topping 120 per cent, meaning that just about every European adult will carry at least one mobile handset, and that a good portion will have two. By 2012, Europeans will spend a combined €195.3 billion (£132 billion) annually on their mobile phone bills.