The EU's information society and media commissioner has announced plans for a new EU regulation on international roaming charges for mobile phone calls.
The measure would require than international charges were not higher than national charges across the 25 EU members.
'Roaming charges are paid for using the network of another operator, and thus should not be higher in an internal market just because the other network is placed in another EU member state,' said commissioner Viviane Reding. She said the new measure could be in force in the second half of 2007, if approved by governments and the European Parliament.
In October last year, the commission published a website showing the cost of using a mobile phone abroad - http://europa.eu.int/information_society/roaming - which showed that prices varied widely between operators.
Commissioner Reding said at the time that she would present an updated website after six months, and would take regulatory action if prices did not move closer to a 'market-oriented level'. She said work done so far on the updated site showed that prices had remained little changed, and consumers were still paying 'unreasonably high prices'.
The commissioner said she would give more details of the plans when the new site was launched in April.
