(BRUSSELS) - The European Commission urged mobile phone operators on Thursday to cut their rates for text messages and data or face price caps like those recently put in place on so-called roaming rates.

"I call on operators to deal with the problem of high prices for text messages and data," EU Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding told journalists.

If her call goes "unheard", Reding said she would produce a report at the end of next year on whether limits needed to be extended to text messages and data transfers after the successful application of caps on roaming.

EU consumers have seen the cost of using their mobile phones while abroad in the Europe fall by up to 60 percent since price caps were put in place over the summer, according to the European Commission.

Since July 30, mobile operators in the EU have had to offer customers so-called roaming rates below a price ceiling and had to switch them over by the end of September.

Under the rules, operators cannot charge EU subscribers making cross-border calls within the 27-nation bloc more than 49 euro cents (69 US cents) a minute in the first year of application while receiving a call could cost no more than 24 cents.

The ceiling for roaming services, which excludes value added tax, would then drop again in the second year, falling to 46 and 22 cents and then 43 and 19 cents in the third year.

The Commission said that at August 30, 200 million EU consumers had switched to the Eurotariff and that many operators had moved faster than they were legally required to, and activated the Eurotariff in July or in August.

The European Union's executive arm singled out Belgian operator Mobistar, a unit of France Telecom's Orange mobile unit, for its lack of transparency in informing customers of new roaming tariffs.

Mobistar sent its customers text messages to inform them that they would automatically be switched to Eurotariff on September 30, but failed to make it clear that customers could have switched to the new tariff a month earlier -- information which was only available on the operator's website.

After the apparent success of regulated roaming rates, EU Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding urged operators to bring down costs for text messages and data or face price caps.

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