Europe To Cap Roaming Fees

Looks like the EU is going to finally address the mess that is European cell phone roaming:

[from Europe Weighs Caps on Roaming Fees for Text Messages - NYTimes.com by Kevin O’Brien]

The European Union’s telecommunications minister will propose price controls that would substantially reduce the roaming fees that individuals are charged to send text messages and limits that could reduce the cost of using the Internet.

Details of the proposal, obtained Wednesday by The International Herald Tribune, show that the minister, Viviane Reding, will seek to cap retail roaming fees for short text messages, or S.M.S., within the European Union at 11 euro cents, or 16 American cents, a message.

That would be a 62 percent reduction from the current average of 29 cents, according to the European Commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union.

Ms. Reding also intends to recommend a cap on the wholesale cost of using cellphones to gain access to the Internet — the fees operators charge each other — that would halve the average cost to one euro a megabyte.

Roaming prices range from 6 cents in Estonia to 80 cents in Belgium, according to the European Regulators Group, a panel of the European Union’s 27 national telecommunications regulators.

This move is coming none too soon, and represents a great weight lifted for many people: not just globe trotting business people, but the very common person in Europe who frequently moves across the very porous borders there.