Hold the Phones!

Yesterday, the European Commission announced a plan to cap international text messaging fees.

From the EU Observer:

Mobile services used abroad – known as ‘roaming’ within the industry – but still inside the European Union should not be “substantially” more expensive than those used domestically, [EU information society commissioner Viviane Reding] said, adding that the commission proposal should bring about a 60 percent reduction in SMS prices.

…

The commission paper argues that prices for roaming SMS services appear to be “broadly stable”, but also “significantly above equivalent domestic SMS services with no clear justification.”

And then, shockingly:

[B]ig operators such as Vodafone and T-Mobile have warned that the plans could mean an end to free handsets and drive up the cost of owning a mobile phone, forcing 100million Europeans to ditch theirs.

So… cut into a company’s bottom line somewhere, and they try to recoup the losses elsewhere? How curious, this “profit motive.”