EU Commissioner tells mobile operators to cut costs or face regulation

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Viviane Reding is the EU's Commissioner responsible for Information Society and Media and will be speaking today at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Reding in her speech today will note that emerging markets like India an China have seen massive growth, with millions of new mobile subscribers registering every month.

However in a pre-released copy of her speech Reding said that Europe still has a key position as the market "where the next generation of mobile will be played out first".

"I am speaking of the shift to the Mobile Internet," the speech read.

"This quantum leap in the communications world is not going to be driven by developing markets, as the emphasis there will be for quite some time still on low cost handsets and simple voice and text services."

Reding is due to say that the transition to Mobile Internet will be in developed markets, but also that such development also needs to see the emergence of open and inexpensive internet services.

She is also expected to say that more low cost bandwidth must be made available.

Her speech reads "The objective is clear: Sending text messages or downloading data via a mobile phone while in another EU country should not be substantially more expensive for a consumer than sending text messages or downloading data at home.

"This is the logic of the borderless single market which we in Europe agreed to create already 50 years ago. Higher retail charges abroad must be justified by additional cost of operators, or they will have to disappear."

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