PLANS by the European Commission to regulate text messaging for the first time are unnecessary and inconsistent with other Commission policy, mobile phone operators said yesterday.

Mobile groups, which are still reeling from plans by the Commission to force them to cut the cost to customers of calling home from abroad, are now threatened with the introduction of regulation, at a wholesale level, of text messaging.

Under the plan, part of a wider shake-up of European telecoms rules unveiled yesterday, transfer fees — so-called “termination” rates — charged by operators for taking texts on their networks, will become subject to tough rules in the same way that calls are. National regulators such as Ofcom would review the market and could force the operators to cut the costs and ultimately pass on the savings to customers in the form of cheaper texts.

Texting, once deemed an “emerging market” by the Commission, and so exempted from regulation, is now big business for operators, generating the most revenues for them after voice calls. Any threat to that revenue is likely to face fierce opposition.

A spokesman for Vodafone said: “This would be inconsistent with the Commission’s approach to regulate where competition is not working.”

A spokesman for O2 said that the market “should be driven by competition, not regulation”.

Analysts — who estimate that about 2 per cent of European mobile revenues are from text “termination” — said that a cut in termination rates would cause downward pressure on retail prices.

The proposal is one of several being looked at under a review of the European Union regulatory framework for electronic communications — the rules governing European communications — spearheaded by Viviane Reding, the European Information Society and Media Commissioner.

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