The price of texting from one EU state to another would tumble nearly two-thirds to €0.11 under proposals from EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding, EU sources said.
Ms Reding's long-awaited proposal is circulating among other EU Commissioners before they formally adopt it later this month or early next month.
The EU's 27 member states and the European Parliament must also approve the change, which builds on EU legislation which substantially cut fees when using a mobile phone abroad.
Some 2.5 billion text messages are sent every year by roaming customers in the EU and cost about 10 times more than domestic short messages (SMS). Roamed texts represented 97 per cent pure revenue for operators, Ms Reding said in July. A roamed text currently costs about €0.29 to send.
The proposal also extends by three years to 2013 caps which are already in place on roamed voice calls but will steepen the rate of decline, the sources said, quoting from the draft text.The voice roaming law was one of the most popular policies ever to come out of Brussels.
The European Regulators Group, made up of national telecoms watchdogs from each member state, said recently that due to falls in wholesale connection prices, the current caps on roamed voice calls are about €0.08 per minute too high.
The cap on the cost of making a roamed voice call fell to €0.43 a minute on August 30.
The GSM Association, an industry lobby with members such as Vodafone, Orange and Telefonica said there was no case for regulatory intervention in the roamed texts sector and a comprehensive analysis of price caps on roamed voice calls has yet to be made.
Ms Reding also wants to introduce billing by the second from the 31st second of a call to avoid operators charging by the minute even if the call only last a few seconds, the sources said.
This may become a point of debate as several EU states have laws that require billing by the second from the first second.
"The regulation of billing increments within the Eurotariff or any other roaming tariff would amount to micro-management. Billing increments are a point of differentiation that operators can use to appeal to customers with different preferences," the GSM Association said. Ms Reding is also proposing a wholesale cap of €1 per megabyte on using a mobile phone or laptop to surf the web, download data or send e-mails, the sources added.
Ms Reding's long-awaited proposal is circulating among other EU Commissioners before they formally adopt it later this month or early next month.
The EU's 27 member states and the European Parliament must also approve the change, which builds on EU legislation which substantially cut fees when using a mobile phone abroad.
Some 2.5 billion text messages are sent every year by roaming customers in the EU and cost about 10 times more than domestic short messages (SMS). Roamed texts represented 97 per cent pure revenue for operators, Ms Reding said in July. A roamed text currently costs about €0.29 to send.
The proposal also extends by three years to 2013 caps which are already in place on roamed voice calls but will steepen the rate of decline, the sources said, quoting from the draft text.The voice roaming law was one of the most popular policies ever to come out of Brussels.
The European Regulators Group, made up of national telecoms watchdogs from each member state, said recently that due to falls in wholesale connection prices, the current caps on roamed voice calls are about €0.08 per minute too high.
The cap on the cost of making a roamed voice call fell to €0.43 a minute on August 30.
The GSM Association, an industry lobby with members such as Vodafone, Orange and Telefonica said there was no case for regulatory intervention in the roamed texts sector and a comprehensive analysis of price caps on roamed voice calls has yet to be made.
Ms Reding also wants to introduce billing by the second from the 31st second of a call to avoid operators charging by the minute even if the call only last a few seconds, the sources said.
This may become a point of debate as several EU states have laws that require billing by the second from the first second.
"The regulation of billing increments within the Eurotariff or any other roaming tariff would amount to micro-management. Billing increments are a point of differentiation that operators can use to appeal to customers with different preferences," the GSM Association said. Ms Reding is also proposing a wholesale cap of €1 per megabyte on using a mobile phone or laptop to surf the web, download data or send e-mails, the sources added.