Data roaming costs on the way down?

If reports are correct – and I really hope they are – the costs of data-roaming could be about to come down. According to a report in The Telegraph, T-Mobile is working to broker a deal between Europe’s mobile operators to cut roaming charges – before the EC steps in and makes them do it anyway.

The EC Commissioner in charge of such things, Viviane Reding, managed to cut the cost of voice roaming by up to 70 percent last year but didn’t mandate any cuts in data costs at the time. Now, she told Reuters she’s ready to take on data roaming and would like to see some action on costs before the summer, although probably not as much as consumers would.

If last year’s voice roaming saga is anything to go by, we can expect the operators to fall over themselves cutting prices in an effort to dissuade the EC from passing some more regulation. Whether regulation is needed or not is a matter for debate – oddly enough, the operators say no and the regulators say yes – but either way, it looks like mobile data will only get cheaper.