Brussels, 05/09/2008 (Agence Europe) - Consumers can hope to see a cut in the cost of texting abroad on 1 July 2009. After introducing legislation to cut roaming costs (the cost of making mobile phone conversations abroad), EU Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding is not resting on her laurels and is submitting to fellow commissioners this week draft legislation she has drawn up on the price of texting, according to close sources. In July 2008, she hinted that she wanted to see the cost of a foreign text reduced to two-thirds of current prices, around 29 eurocents on average, in other words she wants the cost of a text to be between 11 and 15 eurocents. In the draft legislation, the commissioner is reported to have settled on the lower figure of 11 eurocents for text messages sent abroad. Reding also wants to cut costs for consumers wanting to surf the internet or read email abroad on their mobile phone. Her draft legislation aims to cut the charges invoiced for downloading data on mobile phones abroad. The retail prices would reportedly not be covered by legislation for the moment in order not to hold back a new market but an upper limit of one euro a megabyte would be set for wholesale costs, in other words half the current average. The commissioner has decided to tackle the system of invoicing telephone calls by the minute, which inflates the cost of calls, by making calculation by the second compulsory from the 31st second onwards. The upper limit of roaming charges for telephone calls that came into force in the summer of this year has been extended until 2013, three years later than initially planned (2010). The draft legislation is expected to be endorsed by commissioners at the end of this month or the start of October, and the Council of Ministers will examine the draft at the 27 November 2008 Telecoms Council, as desired by the French secretary of state for industry and consumer affairs, Luc Chatel. (I.L/transl.fl)