The plans of EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding for further regulation of mobile pricing in Europe will be a tougher sell than capping the roaming charges, which passed into law last June. There is concern amongst national regulators (and telcos) that imposing pricing limits could damage the financial health of the industry. “There are many members of Parliament who are deeply unhappy with the European Commission trying to set price levels,” said Malcolm Harbour, the leading conservative party member on the Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee. “We accepted price controls on roaming. But these new proposals are largely domestic issues that have to be dealt with by national regulators. I think Parliament will be extremely reluctant to intervene” reports the International Herald Tribune. The article reports that Reding is looking at capping mobile data charges, and also at capping the mobile termination fees the carriers pay each other. It goes a bit futher than that, though, since Reding is also “asking lawmakers to create a new telecommunications regulator based in Brussels called the European Electronic Communications Market Authority, which in some cases could overrule national regulators and force former monopolies like Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) or France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) to separate their service businesses from their physical networks”.

There are some horror stories about some European operators charging up to 25 euros per day for data, which I find very difficult to believe but also difficult to check across every country in the EU. However, Dean Bubley, president of Disruptive Analysis, said “his personal mobile data carrier in London, T-Mobile, charged him €10 for downloading one megabyte of information, which is less than a single song download or the equivalent of 10 Web page views. Bubley said that was one of the best plans he could find” according to the article. I’m not sure how this gels with the 5 days for 2.50 pounds T-Mobile announced in December, unless “fair use” restrictions are even less fair than I thought.

• Reding Looks At European Roaming Data Charges
• European Roaming Charges Cap Passed In To Law; Starts Saturday