(BRUSSELS) - The EU's telecommunications commissioner has drafted plans to regulate the price of sending cross-border text messages by mobile phones in the bloc with a cap of 11 euro cents (16 dollar cents), an official said Wednesday.

Commissioner Viviane Reding aims to get backing for the proposal, part of a package on mobile services, from fellow commissioners in late September or early October before it is submitted to member states and the European Parliament for approval.

Reding is aiming to build on her success last year in pushing through caps on the price of mobile voice calls between EU countries with he plan to limit the cost of sending cross-border text messages, as well as surfing the internet on a mobile phone.

In July, she suggested that the cap on the price of sending a text message from one country to another could range from 11 to 15 cents before tax, but eventually settled on the lower limit in her proposal, the EU official said.

If the cap is approved, it would make sending cross-border text messages much cheaper in Europe, where it currently costs 29 cents on average, 10 times what it costs to send a message domestically.

Reding also wants to regulate the price of downloading data on a mobile phone for such services as web surfing, although at the wholesale level and not retail level.

Her package also includes plans to require billing by the second for cross-border EU calls longer than half a minute after she found evidence that some operators inflate prices by rounding up to the next minute.

Lastly, Reding's proposals include plans to prolong the cap on the price of voice calls, which is due to expire in 2010, to 2013.

EU member states will have a chance to give their opinion on the package at a meeting of telecommunications ministers on November 27 and the European Parliament in the first half of 2009.

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