The European Commission Tuesday decided to change the cost of sending text messages and may “tighten billing rules,” so that users are not charged “too much” when outside the country of their network operator, reported the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

The initiative would also look into decreasing the cost of using mobile devices to go online while they are in a foreign country.

Last year, European Union executives limited the price of cell phone calls while users are abroad in Europe. The maximum cap on sending text messages abroad is expected to be at 11 cents per message. Currently, the price is at an average of 29 cents, which is nearly 10 times greater than sending messages internally.

According to the EJC, EU Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding intends to ask phone operators to charge by the second after discovering that a number of them charge by the minute and round up the price for a call. She said that the regulations would certainly “take effect, as is, in the summer of 2009.”