Media News - Tuesday, July 15, 2008

EU to challenge roaming ‘rip-offs’

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 abroad. 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. The 2.5 billion text messages sent every year by roaming customers in EU member states cost over 10 times more than domestic messages, Reding says. 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". 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. (BBC)

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