EU to act on roaming charges

Caps to be placed on text and internet surfing charges

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28 November 2008 16:50 GMT / By Katie Scott

Controversial plans to try and cut back on the charges we Europeans have to pay when sending texts or downloading data on our mobile phones whilst "roaming" are looking set to become law.

EU Telecoms commissioner, Viviane Reding, has taken on the telecoms company and proposed to widen the remit of the current price caps on mobile phone calls which are made outside of a phone owner's own country but still within the EU.

Reding wants the caps extended to text messages and surfing the Web using a handset.

And it looks like ministers are going to give this plan the go-ahead as well as extending the existing caps on calls by three years to 2013.

Explains Reuters: "Reding has proposed a retail price cap of 11 euro cents per roamed text compared with the current EU average of 29 cents".

Reding is also looking for agreement on the proposal that roamed voice calls should be billed per second instead of per minute.

But the telecoms companies are none too happy and look set to continue to fight against many of the proposals.