The European Union wants rates to be based on the real costs an efficient operator incurs for passing on a call from another operator, rather than some figure that has simply been made up at a telco's whim, reports the Associated Press.

Such rates vary from two euro cents per minute in Cyprus to 15 euro cents in Bulgaria. The EU is miffed that some rates work out to about nine times more than what it costs fixed-line operators to pass calls between each other's networks.

EU Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding said the status quo favoured big telcos who have more incoming calls from fixed-line operators than the smaller operations.

She said that, while the EU was tolerant of high mobile termination rates when mobile networks were first being rolled out across Europe, there was no excuse for it any longer these days.