With a title like this on the Europa website, there’s little doubting where Viviane Reding, the European Union’s Commissioner for Information Society and Media, stands on the thorny topic of forcing mobile operators to reduce the costs for mobile phone customers when using their phones in other EU countries and not on their home networks, known as roaming.

Commissioner Reding is on a mission as this statement in her weekly video message (transcript) makes clear:

I want all Europeans to be able to switch their phone operator – whether mobile or fixed – within one single day, as it is already the case in Ireland and in Malta.

And it looks as though we could actually see lower costs for roaming within the EU, embracing voice, text (SMS) and data, if Reding’s proposals are approved by the member states and the European Parliament.

Reding wants this to be in place across the EU from July 1. That’s a huge hurdle, I reckon, but it’s good news all the same.

If you don’t want to wait, there are other options including MAXRoam which I’ve tried and it can be a big money-saver.

Either way, more disruption in the mobile communication market is coming. Has to be good news from the customer perspective.

Related posts:

• A little more mobile transparency
• The data roaming cost cushion from 3
• A nice little earner from mobile roaming
• Disrupting mobile data costs