European Regulators Group

The European Union's telecommunications minister plans to propose a new set of price controls that would sharply cut the roaming fees charged by mobile operators to send short text messages while also reducing the cost of surfing the Internet on a cell phone.

Details of the proposal, obtained by the International Herald Tribune on Wednesday, show that the minister, Viviane Reding, will seek to cap retail roaming fees for short text messages, or SMS, within the European Union at 11 euro cents, or 16 U.S. cents, a message.

Iayn Dobson, a computer technician from a suburb of Manchester, downloaded a 60-minute episode of the U.S. television show Prison Break last September using a 3G network and mobile data card. Wireless data are expensive in Europe, but Dobson's mistake was making the download while on vacation in Portugal.

That became clear when his monthly bill arrived from Yes Telecom, a subsidiary of Vodafone, the largest European mobile operator: pound(s)31,000, or about $61,000 -- most of it for international data-roaming charges from the video download.