BIG price cuts could be on the way for mobile phone customers.

The telecoms watchdog, Ofcom, has ordered four more years of cuts on calls and said it will investigate text messaging charges.

Customers could see parts of their mobile bills cut by almost 10%, analysts said today.

Two years ago Ofcom ordered a 3% cut in the charges mobile operators make for calls to someone on another network-or those to landlines – so-called termination charges.

Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile,

Orange

and 3, passed on some, but not all, of the cuts to consumers. Charges dropped between 13 and 14%.

Today the watchdog ordered further cuts in prices – of up to 19% – and said they will also apply to the new third generation of mobile phones and should last until March 2011. For

Orange

and T-Mobile this means the termination charge will have to drop from 6.31p per minute to around 5.3p. Vodafone and O2 have been told to cut their charges from 5.63p to the same 5.3p.

Ofcom also launched an inquiry into the multi-billion text messaging market.

It said that it would look at how the mobile networks charge each other and the likes of BT for sending their customers’ messages to other networks.

UK

customers spent £2.1bn on texts last year and it now makes up around a fifth of the mobile networks’ annual revenues

Britons send an over 85 million text messages a day and on average send 28 texts a week.

For basic pay as you go tariffs, Vodafone charges 30p a minute for calls and 12p for texts.

Orange

is 40p/10p; T-Mobile 12p/10p; 02 35p/12p; Virgin Mobile 35p;10p.

Source- http://www.thisismoney.co.uk

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