EU ready to widen caps on roamed texts

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 27 Nov 2008 at 08:57

The EU is set to cap the prices of roamed mobile phone texts and data downloading, to spur a wider range of cheaper services for customers.

EU Telecoms Commissioner, Viviane Reding, has proposed widening the scope of existing price caps on mobile phone calls to include roamed text messages and surfing the internet using a handset. She wants a retail price cap of 11 euro cents per roamed text compared with the current EU average of 29 cents.

Reding is also proposing a wholesale cap of 1 euro per megabyte on roamed data, though some governments want a lower cap. Ministers may also agree a new provision to stop "bill shock" for data roaming services such as a cutoff or warning after 50 euros.

The bloc's telecom ministers are set to give the green light to the measure that also extends by three years to 2013 existing price caps on roamed voice calls.

Ministers are also expected to back her proposal for billing of roamed voice calls per second to crackdown on operators that charge by the minute only.

Tough fight

Operators say consumers could ultimately be hit.

"It is important to look beyond this new extension in order to get out of this cycle of price regulation that tries to target just a piece of the market and which gradually makes investments in new networks less compelling," says a spokesman for Orange-France Telecom.

However Reding isn't having it all her own way. Operators are fighting her call for a new EU-funded telecoms regulator that also looks at internet security. Parliament wants a less powerful body, partly funded by the EU and excludes unternet security. EU states want a non-EU body that would simply coordinate national telecoms regulators.