Regulators are set to try to force phone companies to cut the cost of sending text messages within the EU.
EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding is expected to outline plans to make the cost of texting from abroad more comparable to doing so at home.
The ambition for legislation follows the refusal of most firms to reduce overseas SMS prices and the cost of mobile internet access while Mobile firms hit roaming deadline ...
Cell Phone Companies Allowed to Charge for Incoming Calls ...
Poland in plea to EU on shipyards ... abroad.
The mobile phone operators argue that customers are not being ripped off.
The industry body, the GSM Association, says that they are in a competitive business and that prices are falling anyway.
The new measures may be proposed to the European Parliament in September.
'No self-regulation'
The 2.5 billion text messages sent every year by roaming customers in EU member states cost over 10 times more than domestic messages, Ms Reding says.
She is expected to reveal that the average cost of a roaming text message in the EU between October 2007 and March 2008 was 29 euro cents (23p), but was sometimes as high as 80 cents (64p).
UK customers consumers pay up to 50 cents (40p) per text message from abroad compared to the equivalent of 15 cents (12p) domestically.
And sending a text to family in the UK from holiday in Spain will cost the traveller an average of 63 cents (40p), according to EU figures.
Last year, the European Commission set limits on roaming charges for mobile phone calls across the EU.
But it says that "calls on the industry for self-regulation and voluntary reductions of roaming prices for text messages have not been answered".
Ms Reding is also expected to try and put an end to "bill shocks" - when users are hit with unexpectedly high costs for using a mobile connection to surf the internet.
Cross-border fees
Last month, the Commission unveiled plans to lower the cost of mobile phone calls by reducing the fees operators charge each other for using their networks.
Europe's telecoms watchdog published guidelines for laws to harmonise call termination fees across the EU by 2011.
Currently, 27 national authorities regulate fees charged by an operator for handling calls from another.
Brussels said consumers ended up losing out because of variations in cross-border fees.
Operators have until 2011 to abide by the new regulations, which the Commission estimated would make calls 70% cheaper.
(BBC)
<< Back