SMS messaging should cost less than half of what it does now, E.U. regulators have warned.

The European Commission wants to set a price cap for text messages of 11 euro cents, far below the current E.U. average of 29 euro cents. E.U. telecom's person, Viviane Reding, said she was putting the new rules forward because telecommunications companies had not responded to her call for them to lower the E.U. roaming charges. She said that there was no reason in a normal functioning market for such excessive prices.

Already, the E.U. campaign forced the cost of voice calls made and received outside a user's home nation right down. Telcos said that the E.U. is interfering in the market without proving its claim that lowering prices would drive up text-message usage. They said that if they didn’t make huge amounts of cash from punters they would not be able to invest in future technology.

The E.U. wants tighter control over mobile Internet fees, saying consumers must be able to set their own upper limit for data roaming charges to avoid "bill shocks" of thousands of euros for expensive downloads abroad.