Roaming text prices within the EU have continually been at the forefront of arugement, well it appears that soon roaming text prices within the EU could be cut by up to 2/3’s under proposals announced by the European Commission.

Continuing to clash with the leading mobile phone operators, EU telecoms commissioner, Viviane Reding said: “EU citizens should be free to text across borders without being ripped off.”

On average 2.5 billion text messages are sent every year by roaming customers with a cost of 10 times more than that of domestic customers. However the GSM Association claims average prices have dropped by 18% over last year to around €0.10, that’s about 7p per text.

The European Regulators’ Group, including the UK’s Ofcom state the cap should be between €0.11 and €0.15 per text rather than the current EU average of €0.29 while domestic text can be as low as €0.034.

However, Reding has accused mobile operators of failing to voluntarily drop prices when called for, she says: “I deplore this bunker mentality among the operators. They always promise self-regulation and fail to deliver: nothing has happened.”

Reding has confirmed she would reduce the caps on calls from August 30 and again next year.

Source — guardian