Vodafone moved today to stave off a threatened crackdown on the “very high” charges for sending text messages and downloading music while abroad by promising new cut-rate tariffs.

The mobile giant pledged to strike new wholesale deals with other operators that would result in “significantly lower” data “roaming” rates from July.

The group will now charge other network operators a maximum of €0.50 for 200kb of data.

At present the average cost of one megabyte is €3 to €4.

It is also to introduce a new flat-rate tariff for users of laptop data cards.

The move comes ahead of a meeting tomorrow of Europe’s telecoms ministers to finalise details of new legislation aimed at slashing costs on mobile calls made abroad by up to 70 per cent.

The Commission is seeking to set price caps with a maximum price of 11p a minute for receiving calls, 34p a minute for calling home and 23p a minute for calls within a country.

The cuts should take effect from the end of June.

Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for Information, Society and Media, who is spearheading the changes, is threatening to force down data charges, too.

Earlier today she attacked the costs for sending texts and downloading music and other data while abroad as “very high”.

Mobile operators should voluntarily reduce their prices or “risk [that] these charges also need to be regulated.”

Internet access has come to be a standard feature on mobiles.

Users can access the net on 2.5G phones using so-called GRPS technology or on a "next-generation" 3G mobile or data card.

But some mobile companies charge up to 25 times the amount they charge in the UK for mobile data services abroad.

Simply downloading a few songs or e-mails on the beach can trigger an astronomical bill.

Consumer groups assert that the phone companies are exploiting the nascent technology to crank up charges before people wake up to the costs.

Finding details about data tariffs, they complain, is often difficult.

Mobile companies have fiercely resisted the imposed cuts to call charges and are set to resist data rules in the same way.

They have argued that competition is enough to bring down prices.

They have also sought to defend the surcharges on calls made from abroad by saying that it is still cheaper to use a mobile than to use a hotel phone.

A spokesman for O2 said it hoped that legislation on data charges did not have to be introduced.

It was, it said, voluntarily “working through a number of pricing plans to reduce data plans for UK consumers”.

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