THE EUROPEAN Union has reached a draft deal to slash the price of texting from abroad and capping the wholesale cost of using a laptop to surf the internet outside a home state.

The deal brings in steeper price cuts than had been planned under a measure drafted by EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding, and brings forward their introduction by two months.

It widens the scope of an existing regulation that caps the price of roamed voice calls.

“Commissioner Reding left the meeting saying this is a victory for European consumers and for the European single telecoms market,” her spokesman said.

The European Parliament and EU states struck a deal on the measure at a meeting in Strasbourg, France, and parliament will endorse the agreement next month so the new rules come into force in time for the summer holidays.

“I am hopeful that all parties will endorse a concrete first-reading agreement so that European consumers can fully benefit from this new regulation by the beginning of this summer,” said Adina-Ioana Valean, the Romanian MEP who steered the measure through parliament.

EU regulators and the European Commission want to end “bill shock”, when business travellers or holidaymakers return home to huge charges for checking e-mails or surfing the web while away.

The law caps the price to consumers of roamed text messages and extends by three years to June 2012 current EU price limits on roamed voice calls.

The deal includes the following:

• retail price of a roamed text within the EU capped at 11 cent from July 1, 2009, compared with up to 49 cent at present;
• wholesale price of data roaming will be capped at €1 per megabyte from July, falling to 80 cent from July 2010 and to 50 cent from July 2011;
• retail caps on outgoing roamed voice calls extended for three years to 2012, with the price falling to 43 cent per minute from July 2009 from 46 cent at present, and then to 39 cent from July, 2010 and 35 cent from July 2011;
• retail caps on incoming roamed calls capped at 19 cent from July from 22 cent at present, falling to 15 cent from July 2010 and to 11 cent from July 2011