October 05, 2007	Friday	Ramazan 22, 1428

BRUSSELS, Oct 4: The European Commission urged mobile phone operators on Thursday to cut their rates for text messages and data or face price caps like those recently put in place on so-called roaming rates.

“I call on operators to deal with the problem of high prices for text messages and data,” EU Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding told journalists.

If her call goes “unheard”, Reding said she would produce a report at the end of next year on whether limits needed to be extended to text messages and data transfers after the successful application of caps on roaming.

EU consumers have seen the cost of using their mobile phones while abroad in the Europe fall by up to 60 per cent since price caps were put in place over the summer, according to the European Commission.

Since July 30, mobile operators in the EU have had to offer customers so-called roaming rates below a price ceiling and had to switch them over by the end of September.

Under the rules, operators cannot charge EU subscribers making cross-border calls within the 27-nation bloc more than 49 euro cents a minute in the first year of application while receiving a call could cost no more than 24 cents.—AFP