The European Commission is planning to cut the cost of sending a text message while abroad by around two-thirds.
EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said she would recommend setting a price cap for texting across EU borders to fellow commissioners in October.
She said the 2.5 billion text messages sent every year by roaming customers in the EU cost over 10 times more than domestic texts. 'EU citizens should be free to text across borders without being ripped off,' she said.
Reding last year introduced price caps on roaming voice mobile calls.
Today, she said Europe's mobile industry 'still hasn't got the message that credible price reductions are needed to avoid regulation'.
The commissioner is being backed by the European Regulators Group of the EU's 27 national telecoms regulators. A roamed text currently costs an average of 29 cent.
'In the view of the ERG, a price cap between 11 and 15 cent per SMS would be appropriate,' Daniel Pataki, ERG chairman and head of the Hungarian National Communications Authority, said in a joint statement with Reding. In February, the commissioner had given operators a retail target of 12 cent per roamed text.
