EU to cap European SMS roaming rates at 11 Euro cents
By Donald Melanson 
posted Sep 23rd 2008 7:11PM
posted Sep 23rd 2008 7:11PM
While the United States and Canada are still pondering what to do (if anything) about the rising cost of text messaging, it looks like the European Union has finally decided to put its rather large foot down and set a cap on all texts sent within Europe. According to Reuters, the new maximum rate will be 11 Euro cents, which is quite the bargain considering that, as Mobile Burn points out, a German customer sending a text from Spain now has to pay a hefty 41 Euro cents for the privilege. Under the same European Commission proposal, phone calls will also have to be billed by the second, and competition for accessing the internet abroad will also apparently be "increased," although any further specifics on that point are a bit light at the moment. There's also no word exact word as to when the new rules will go into effect, but previous reports had said it could happen as soon as January.[Via Mobile Burn]
The Siemens phone picture again?
I mean, really?
They could at least have used a photo from an existing European cellphone manufacturer like Nokia!
Great news for all europeans, and especially for all italians. Actually we have to pay 1 EURO for sending an sms from most countries abroad to italy.....damn mobile operators.
Hope the EU commission will lock down the rate forever, sending few kb of data at a rate of MORE than 100 EURO/MB was just ridiculous!
Go commission go!!!
Here we have thousands of "different" rate plans, made solely to make harder the choice for consumer, who cannot even think about comparing and deciding clearly. hope the rate for second will be the only parameter to judge a tariff from now on...
This is indeed very interesting news as I have to pay 12eurocents (almost $0.18) for a text-message within my own country (Mobistar, Belgium).
I hope they will drop there prices for national text-messaging as well :D
Well Belgacom just rapes you if you are out of the country..... 50 EURO cents a msg
which is equivalent to 73 dollar cents
even in belgium, messaging to a different country costs 45 euro cents = 66 dollar cents
You go, Europe! I hope this catches on more with the US government, and something actually gets done about it.
"it looks like the European Union has finally decided to put its rather large foot down and set a cap on all texts sent within Europe."
Oh come on. Not all of Europe is in the EU. Please try to be a bit more specific and correct in the future
We're already getting gouged.. it now costs $0.25 to send a message from Canada to the US (with Rogers).
Because 160 characters apparently costs the same as a 10 minute phonecall now.
Even better: $0.25 to send AND $0.25 to RECEIVE! What is the network cost of that transmission? $0.0004? What a total profit!