Executives from the mobile phone industry have reacted angrily to threats from European commissioner Viviane Reding that she would regulate the industry if prices for mobile data services when travelling abroad were not reduced to "adequate levels" by July 1st next.
"We don't feel that price regulation is beneficial," said Tom Phillips, head of regulatory affairs at the GSM Association, organisers of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where Ms Reding made her call on Monday.
Last August, the EU introduced price caps on the cost of mobile phone calls when travelling within Europe. However, it is concerned that operators have not reduced the price of texts and other data services and have even increased them in some cases.
"We feel the way to influence prices is to allow for innovation," said Mr Phillips. "We argue that voice roaming is a competitive market, while data roaming is clearly at a different stage of its development."
Executives of some of the most powerful companies in the mobile phone industry gave keynote speeches at the congress yesterday. It is the sector's most important annual gathering, attracting 60,000 visitors.
Vodafone global chief executive Arun Sarin said the battle between content providers, web companies and operators, all of whom are developing mobile services, would shape the future of the industry. He said the industry was at "an important crossroads" and operators could not "sit back" and become pipes for other companies' content.
Mr Sarin shared a platform with John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco Systems, Wang Jianzhou, head of China Mobile, and Nokia president Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Mr Wang used the opportunity to talk up his company's environmental credentials, a common theme for the 1,300 companies exhibiting at the event.
While major manufacturers Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson unveiled new handsets and services, Texas Instruments, NEC, Freescale Semiconductor and Qualcomm were showing prototype phones running Google's Android operating system. Rival Yahoo launched OneConnect, which brings social network services to phones.
