E.U. Criticizes Mobile Phone Roaming Charges

The findings raise the likelihood that the commission will recommend next year that the European Unions price caps be extended, rather than be allowed to expire.

“Three years since the rules came in, most operators propose retail prices that hover around the maximum legal caps, the Unions commissioner for telecommunications," Neelie Kroes, said in a statement. “More competition on the E.U. roaming market would provide better choice and even better rates to consumers."

In an update on the effects of the retail price caps, which went into effect in July 2007, the Union said that they had lowered the cost of making a cross-border mobile roaming call by more than 70 percent since 2005, and the cost of a text message by 60 percent.

According to the commission, consumers in the 27-country bloc paid on average 38 euro cents, or 46 U.S. cents, per minute at the end of 2009 in roaming fees, on top of their usual calling charges, to make a call while outside their home countries, and 17 cents to receive a call.

That means mobile operators, which had opposed the price controls as intrusive, have kept rates close to the legal limit of 43 cents per minute for making a call, 19 cents to receive one, and 11 cents per SMS. On Friday, the cap for making phone calls is to fall to 39 cents, and to 15 cents for receiving.

Ms. Kroes, the Unions former competition commissioner, is supposed to decide by June 2011 whether to recommend extending the price caps or to let them expire one year later, in 2012 something operators have been lobbying for in Brussels.

Levi Nietvelt, a spokesman for the European Consumers Organization, a lobby group based in Brussels, said “the price caps had limited some charges but had not brought down prices enough."

“You still have the bill shocks," Mr. Nietvelt said. “Crossing a border should not increase costs and there is no technical reason to do so."