The European Commission on Wednesday welcomed the European Parliament's approval of a package that will substantially reduce the charges for using mobile phones abroad within the European Union (EU).

"Today is a good day for consumers and business travelers in the EU," said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding in a statement.

"This means that already from this summer, mobile phone customers will start benefiting from substantially reduced roaming charges when traveling from one EU country to another," she said.

"Europe's internal market will finally become truly borderless, even for mobile phone bills," she added.

The package, based on a European Commission proposal, was a result of a compromise between the European Parliament and the EU presidency, which represents the member states.

The European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg, France, voted by an overwhelming majority for the package by a show of hands.

Under the package, the cap for outgoing calls made abroad will be 49 euro cents (66 U.S. cents) per minute. The cap will decrease automatically by 3 cents per year in the following two years after the entry into force of the regulation.

The cap for receiving calls abroad will be 24 cents. It will drop to 22 cents after the first year, and to 19 cents in the following year.

The average wholesale charge that a "visited" operator can levy on a roaming customer's "home" operator for the provision of roaming calls will be capped at 30 cents per minute.

All the prices are VAT excluded.

The prices under the package are higher than what the European Commission had proposed and lower than the member states' proposal.

The commission, the executive body of the EU, put the proposal on the table for cheaper roaming charges in July 2006 after mobile operators ignored repeated warnings from the commission for voluntary reduction of charges.

Currently, using mobile phones abroad within the EU remains on average four times more expensive than domestic mobile phone calls. A website set up by the commission to monitor roaming charges exposed flagrant roaming prices of up to 12 euros for a four-minute call.